Discipline: Music Composition

Chester Biscardi

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1981, 1984, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2004

Chester Biscardi’s music has been performed throughout Asia, Europe, and North and South America. His catalog includes At the Still Point, for orchestra, Sailors & Dreamers, for voice and chamber ensemble, Tight-Rope, a chamber opera in nine uninterrupted scenes, Trasumanar, for twelve percussionists and piano, and numerous works for solo piano, voice and piano, small and large chamber ensembles, and chorus, as well as incidental music for theater, dance, and television. Recordings appear on the Albany, AME, Bridge, CRI (New World Records), Furious Artisans, Intim Musik, Naxos, New Albion, New Ariel, North/South Recordings, Perfect Enemy Records, and Sept Jardins labels, including a recent Naxos release of Chester Biscardi: In Time’s Unfolding. Biscardi is a recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a commission from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, amongst numerous other awards and fellowships.

In 1981, Biscardi was the recipient of MacDowell's Norlin Foundation Fellowship in honor of Aaron Copland, and in 1998 was the recipient of the Frances and William Schuman Fellowship. He served on MacDowell's Fellows Executive Committee from 1993-1994; served on the composers admissions panel for a few years; and chaired the Edward MacDowell Medal Selection Panel in 2000 when Lou Harrison won the award.

Studios

MacDowell

Chester Biscardi worked in the MacDowell studio.

Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…

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