"Liberating Chemistry from the Tyranny of Functional Groups"


Bruce Saylor
Composer
Aaron Copland School of Music
Queens College



Composer BRUCE SAYLOR holds degrees from The Juilliard School, from the City University of New York where he received his Ph.D. He has also studied at the Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome under a Fulbright Scholarship.

In works that range from full-length opera ("Orpheus Descending" for Lyric Opera of Chicago) to solo piano ("Liberating Chemistry"), Saylor has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras, chamber groups and soloists. The winner of more than 35 awards in his field, he has received honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Society of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.

He has composed the music for two holiday CDs for the great American soprano Jessye Norman, and also the music she sang at President Clinton's Second Inaugural, at the Rheims Cathedral Eclipse Spectacular, and arrangements for the eveninglength "The Sacred Ellington," which Miss Norman has taken around the world.

Bruce Saylor teaches at Queens College and lives in New York City with his wife the mezzosoprano Constance Beavon and their four daughters.