John Corigliano

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John Corigliano (born February 16, 1938) is an American composer of classical music. He is a former student of Otto Luening, Vittorio Giannini and Paul Creston. His students include Eric Whitacre, Elliot Goldenthal, John Mackey, Avner Dorman, Mason Bates, Jefferson Friedman, among others.

Most of Corigliano's work has been for full symphony orchestra. He employs a wide variety of styles, sometimes even within the same work but aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience.

He has written three symphonies (orchestra, string orchestra, and wind band respectively), concertos for clarinet, flute, violin, oboe, and piano, film scores, various chamber works (including a string quartet) and an opera, The Ghosts of Versailles.

In 1991 he was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No.1. In 2001 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra. Corigliano composed dramatic scores for three motion pictures: Altered States (1980) (Oscar-nominated), Revolution (1985) (Anthony Asquith Award winner) and The Red Violin (1999) (won an Academy Award). Revolution is one of Corigliano's more impressive but less well-known creations, as it was never released as a recording (the composer did however extract some of the score for use in his "Symphony #1"). In 2003, he expanded the score of The Red Violin into his first Violin Concerto.

Corigliano comes from a musical family. His father was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years, and his mother played piano. He studied composition at Columbia University and at the Manhattan School of Music. Before achieving success as composer, Corigliano worked as assistant to the director on Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts and as a session producer for classical artists such as Andre Watts.

In 1970 Corigliano teamed up with David Hess to create The Naked Carmen. In a recent communication with David Hess, Hess acknowledged that The Naked Carmen was originally conceived by John Corigliano and himself as a way to update the most popular opera of our time (referring to Bizet's Carmen). Mercury Records wanted the Classical (music) and Popular (music) divisions to work together and after a meeting with Joe Bott, Scott Mampe and Bob Reno it was decided to proceed with the project. In Hess's own words, the project was "a collective decision."

In 1996, The Corigliano Quartet was founded, taking John Corigliano's name as a tribute to the composer.

His partner is fellow composer Mark Adamo.