Joseph Summer
Composer, Founder
Composer, Founder
Born in 1956, composer Joseph Summer began playing French horn in 1963 and composing shortly thereafter. Following his studies with renowned Czech composer Karl Husa at Eastern Music Festival, Joseph was accepted at Oberlin Conservatory to study music composition at the age of fifteen. Upon his graduation, the young composer was recruited to teach music theory at Carnegie-Mellon University. In 1978, Joseph left Carnegie-Mellon and has composed full time ever since.
Summer's concerto for French horn and orchestra, "The Silver Swan," won the 1980 National Federation of Music Clubs' Orchestral Composition Contest, and the following year he served as a judge in the same contest. Supported by the National Endowment of the Arts, in 1981, The Tenor's Suite, a one act tragedy based on The Tenor by Frank Wedekind, was Summer's first fully staged production. In the weekly Philadelphia arts paper, The Welcomat, J. C. Sutton wrote of The Tenor's Suite "It's accessible, written with the human ear in mind, shot through with rhythmically underpinned, emotionally satisfying, classical appeal." The following year, the Contemporary Opera Company of America produced Hippolytus, Summer's first opera, based on Euripides' tragedy. Of the Philadelphia premiere, Daniel Webster, music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote "Summer gives his singers soaring arias, duets and full blown scenes... unabashedly neo-Straussian in its sumptuousness... The device of the goddess descending and pronouncing the verdict from Mount Olympus is both authentic and appealing, and Summer was up to the challenge of writing the aria to make it so." Summer has written four comic operas based on the bawdy stories of Boccaccio's The Decameron (And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth, Courting Disaster, Their Fate In The Hands Of The Friar, and Gianetta). These operas are part of a planned seven opera cycle, The Hebdomad, which follows the exploits of a half dozen characters over the course of a week in an imagined 14th century Naples. Currently, Summer is working on the fifth of these, titled Also Known As. Between the fourth and fifth operas of the Hebdomad cycle, Summer combined his love for Shakespeare and his predilection for opera in his opera Hamlet.
In 2003 Summer established The Shakespeare Concerts for which he serves as Executive Director. In its seven seasons, The Shakespeare Concerts has premiered more than twenty of Summer's sixty odd "Oxford Songs;" eight books of settings of the bard's work, from sonnets to complete scenes from the plays. The accompanying ensembles are equally diverse, ranging from piano through string quartet to full size orchestra. Summer has also written chamber music, such as his recently completed string quartet based on short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths and a recently completed Sonata for Violoncello and Piano.
Summer's concerto for French horn and orchestra, "The Silver Swan," won the 1980 National Federation of Music Clubs' Orchestral Composition Contest, and the following year he served as a judge in the same contest. Supported by the National Endowment of the Arts, in 1981, The Tenor's Suite, a one act tragedy based on The Tenor by Frank Wedekind, was Summer's first fully staged production. In the weekly Philadelphia arts paper, The Welcomat, J. C. Sutton wrote of The Tenor's Suite "It's accessible, written with the human ear in mind, shot through with rhythmically underpinned, emotionally satisfying, classical appeal." The following year, the Contemporary Opera Company of America produced Hippolytus, Summer's first opera, based on Euripides' tragedy. Of the Philadelphia premiere, Daniel Webster, music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote "Summer gives his singers soaring arias, duets and full blown scenes... unabashedly neo-Straussian in its sumptuousness... The device of the goddess descending and pronouncing the verdict from Mount Olympus is both authentic and appealing, and Summer was up to the challenge of writing the aria to make it so." Summer has written four comic operas based on the bawdy stories of Boccaccio's The Decameron (And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth, Courting Disaster, Their Fate In The Hands Of The Friar, and Gianetta). These operas are part of a planned seven opera cycle, The Hebdomad, which follows the exploits of a half dozen characters over the course of a week in an imagined 14th century Naples. Currently, Summer is working on the fifth of these, titled Also Known As. Between the fourth and fifth operas of the Hebdomad cycle, Summer combined his love for Shakespeare and his predilection for opera in his opera Hamlet.
In 2003 Summer established The Shakespeare Concerts for which he serves as Executive Director. In its seven seasons, The Shakespeare Concerts has premiered more than twenty of Summer's sixty odd "Oxford Songs;" eight books of settings of the bard's work, from sonnets to complete scenes from the plays. The accompanying ensembles are equally diverse, ranging from piano through string quartet to full size orchestra. Summer has also written chamber music, such as his recently completed string quartet based on short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths and a recently completed Sonata for Violoncello and Piano.
