(This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all)

Title: Wave
Commission: 2011
Completed: 2013
Instrumentation: 
Premiere Location: January 24, 2015 in Chicago
Premiere Ensemble: eighth blackbird
Notes:

Title: Pre-Pulse Suspended
Commission: 
Completed: 1984
Instrumentation: chamber orchestra
Premiere Location: Tanglewood Music Center, MA
Premiere Ensemble:
Notes:

Lee (Leon Joseph) Hyla was an award-winning American composer from Niagara Falls, New York. He was born there August 31, 1952, and grew up in Greencastle, Indiana. After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music (B. Mus., 1975), he studied at SUNY – Stony Brook (M.A, 1978), and then lived in New York City for over ten years. In 1992 he returned to Boston to teach at the New England Conservatory, where he eventually became co-chairman of the composition department. In September, 2007 he assumed the Harry N. and Ruth F. Wyatt Chair of Music Composition at Northwestern University. He passed away at the age of 61 on June 6, 2014 in Chicago.

The music of Lee Hyla sought to find a common ground between the tradition of postwar American Expressionism represented by composers such as Stephan Wolpe and Elliott Carter and the gritty urban style of avant-garde Jazz musicians like Cecil Taylor. Hyla also integrated aspects of the rougher styles of Rock (especially Punk) and free jazz into the unique mix of his music. Despite its high energy and raw surface, the music is fully notated, with nothing improvised, nor is there anything haphazard about Hyla’s sense of pitch, or dramatic structure, both of which are meticulous in a way that allows raucousness to achieve elegance.