Honorary Doctor of Music
George Walker
Presented at the Eastman School of Music Ceremony
George
Walker's distinguished career as a musician, composer, pianist, and
educator has won him international acclaim and numerous awards,
commissions, and major performances. Walker began studying piano at age
five, entered Oberlin College at 14, and graduated at the top of his
conservatory class at 18. He was admitted to the Curtis Institute of
Music to study piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Rosario
Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti. In 1945, he
made his acclaimed New York recital debut and performed the
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with Eugene Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra two weeks later as the winner of the
Philadelphia Youth Auditions.
In 1953, he toured seven European
countries under the auspices of the National Concert Artists. In 1956,
he earned the DMA and Artist's Diploma in piano from the Eastman School
of Music. Walker has published more than 90 works for almost every
medium. He has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, the
Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Eastman School of Music,
the orchestras of New Jersey, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, and
many other ensembles. He has received awards from the Fulbright, John
Hay Whitney, Rockefeller, and Koussevitzky Foundations and from the
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His music has been recorded by
Columbia Records, Sony, Naxos, BIS, Centaur, Albany Records, and many
other labels. Walker's 1946 Lyric for Strings is perhaps the most frequently performed work by a living American composer. His Piano Sonata No. 2, written as his Eastman doctoral dissertation, has been deemed a masterpiece.
In 1996, he received the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra.
Walker has held faculty appointments at Smith, Rutgers, and the
Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, among others. He is a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American
Classical Music Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of six honorary
doctorate degrees.
[George Walker (b. 1922) is featured at AfriClassical.com]
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