Lee Gannon

From Wind Repertory Project
Lee Gannon

Biography

Donald Lee Gannon (1960, Nashville, Tenn. – 2 September 1996, Nashville, Tenn.) was an American composer.

Mr. Gannon studied piano, flute and composition at the Eastman School of Music. His composition teachers included Samuel Adler, Claude Baker, Robert Morris and Joseph Schwantner. He also studied with Dan Welcher at the University of Texas, where he completed his master's degree in 1990.

Mr. Gannon composed prolifically for voice, solo instruments, chamber ensembles and orchestra, and had works performed in recent years by the American Composers Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the Nashville Symphony.

Many of his works were about his struggled with H.I.V., and in some of his works he showed the disease being conquered by innocence or fortitude. In The Time Was Gold, for example, a harsh clarinet line representing the virus was vanquished by a toy piano.

Mr. Gannon was awarded the Charles Ives Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993. He had composed about 40 works when he died in a car accident at the age of 36.


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