John Heiss
Biography
John Heiss (b. 1938) is an American composer, conductor, educator and flutist.
John Heiss studied composition with Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Earl Kim, Otto Luening and Darius Milhaud, and flute with Arthur Lora, James Hosmer and Albert Tipton.
Heiss has been principal flute of Boston Musica Viva and has performed with many local ensembles, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
His works have been performed worldwide, receiving premieres by Speculum Musicae, Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Aeolian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, and Alea III. He has received awards and commissions from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, ASCAP, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Heiss's articles on contemporary music have appeared in Winds Quarterly, Perspectives of New Music, and The Instrumentalist. Along with Juilliard faculty Joel Sachs, Heiss has designed and written a book/CD-Rom classical music primer for Blue Marble Music entitled Classical Explorer.
Starting in the 1970s, Heiss has directed many New England Conservatory (NEC) festivals dedicated to composers or themes, and has spearheaded visits to NEC by many composers, including György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Olivier Messiaen, Gunther Schuller, and Michael Tippett.
Works for Winds
- Mosaics I (1986)
Resources
- "John Heiss." New England Conservatory. Web. Accessed 4 December 2020