As I’m exploring music in this series #blackcomposers, I am experiencing a weird sense of loss when I realize a composer whose works I admire had lived or worked in the same city as I had at some point in my life, and I never got to know them. Today’s composer is quite active, and through the power of FB I hope to get to know him! (ahem..commission..ahem) What fantastic chamber music is this!?! He doesn’t seem to have a website, so I excerpted info from his bio on the Duke University website. I hope to get to know more about him.
Anthony Kelley joined the Duke University music faculty in 2000 after serving as Composer-in-Residence with the Richmond Symphony for three years under a grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Duke University, and he earned a Ph.D. in Musical Composition from the University of California at Berkeley.
His works have been performed by the Richmond Symphony, The American Composers Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and others. He has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters, and composition fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His recent work, such as his soundtracks to the H. Lee Waters/Tom Whiteside film "Conjuring Bearden" [2006] and Dante James's film, The Doll [2007], explores music as linked with other media, arts, and sociological phenomena. He co-directs and performs in the improvisational Postmodern blues quartet called the BLAK Ensemble.