MUSIC DIRECTOR

Dr. James Yannatos

James Yannatos was born and educated in New York City. After attending the High School of Music and Art and the Manhattan School of Music, he pursued composition and studies with Philip Bezanson, Nadia Boulanger, Luigi Dallapiccola, Darius Milhaud, and Paul Hindemith, as well as conducting studies with William Steinberg and Leonard Bernstein which took Yannatos to Yale University (B.M., M.M.), the University of Iowa (Ph.D.), Aspen and Tanglewood Music Festivals, and Paris.

He has been music director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra since 1964 and has led that group on tours to Europe, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Asia.

He has appeared as guest conductor-composer at the Aspen, Banff, Tanglewood, Chautauqua, and Saratoga Festivals, and with the Boston Pops, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Baltimore, and San Antonio Symphonies and the Sverdlovsk, Leningrad, Cleveland, and American Symphony Chamber Orchestras. He also has been the co-director of the New England Composers Orchestra.

Yannatos has received commissions for orchestral, vocal, and instrumental works which include Cycles (recorded by Collage), Tunes and Dances: A New England Overture (Phi Beta Kappa), Sounds of Desolation and Joy (Lucy Shelton), Concerto for Bass and Orchestra (Alea III and Edwin Barker, Principal Bassist with the Boston Syphony Orchestra); Concerto for String Quartet and orchestra (Mendelssohn String Quartet with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra on CD by Albany Records); and Suite for solo horn (Erik Ruske on CD by Albany Records). His most ambitious work, Trinity Mass (for soloists, chorus and orchestra), was premiered in Boston and New York in 1986 with the HRO and Harvard choral groups and Jason Robards, narrator, and was aired on National Public Radio. His Symphony No. 3 for strings: Prisms (with the HRO on CD by Albany Records) and Symphony No. 5 Son et Lumiere were premiered in the former USSR by the Lithuanian State Orchestra and the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra in 1990 and 1992.

His Piano Concerto was premiered in 1994 by the Florida West Coast Symphony with William Doppmann, piano and the HRO (Albany Records). He conducted the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra in his Concerto for Bass and Orchestra in 1995, and the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in his Symphony No. 3: Prisms in 1995.

Additional performances include his Symphony No. 4 (Tiananmen Square) performed in Prague, Czech Republic in 1992 (Albany Records); Duo for violin and piano performed at the Kennedy Center in 1992; Piano Concerto in 1994 at Sanders Theatre; Haiku Cycle in Athens, Greece and Harvard University in 1995 and 1998; Onata Lux at Sanders THeatre and concerts in England in 1995 and New York in 1998; Piano Trio in 1995 and 1998 in Boston; Percussion Concerto in 1997 at New England Conservatory; and Symphony No. 5: Sons et Lumiere in 1999 at Sanders Theatre. Yannatos has published music for children including four volumes of Silly and Serious Songs based on the words of children; Amazing Grace (a choral drama), Harvard University in 1999; and Cantata: Creation Sings its own Song, Boston University in 1999. He has also written music for television, including Novas City of Coral, Metromedias Assassins Among Us and two operas.

Dr. Yannatos has received innumerable awards as a composer, including the Artists Foundation Award of 1988 for his Trinity Mass, available on CD by Albany Records.

A complete catalog of Dr. Yannatos's scores and recordings is available for download.