Phillip Ramey :::
Phillip Ramey
Graduated in 1957
Inducted in 2008
After graduating from LT in 1957, Phillip Ramey studied composition with Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin, initially in France and then in Chicago, at DePaul University. Graduate studies were in New York at Columbia University. An accomplished pianist, Ramey gave the premiere of his Concert Suite for Piano and Orchestra in 1962 in Chicago. His work of orchestral scores includes several concertos, chamber-ensemble pieces and a large body of solo-piano works, notably six sonatas, Piano Fantasy and the satiric Leningrad Rag, based on Scott Joplin and written for the legendary Vladimir Horowitz. Ramey’s Horn Concerto, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate its 150th anniversary, was introduced by that orchestra and conducted by Leonard Slatkin. His orchestration of Aaron Copland’s piano piece, Proclamation, had an historic bi-coastal premiere, performed on the same evening in New York by Zubin Mehta and in Los Angeles by Erich Leinsdorf. Copland once wrote of Ramey, “He is a composer of real individuality, with a flair for dramatic gesture.” A well-known writer on music, Ramey has published hundreds of liner notes, along with a multitude of concert program notes and magazine articles. From 1977 to 1993 he served as Annotator and Program Editor of the New York Philharmonic. His biography of the composer Irving Fine, published in 2005 by the U.S. Library of Congress, received the 2006 Deems Taylor Award for Outstanding Musical Biography. His autobiography was completed in 2007, and in 2008, he finished writing a novel for a German movie company, which will be filmed in Morocco in 2009. Ramey’s music is available from several major publishers, including two CDs of his piano music, the beginning of a complete survey: the first (2006) performed by the British pianist Stephen Gosling; the second (2008) by the Argentinean Mirian Conti. Ramey’s most recent large-scale works are J.F.K.: Oration for Speaker and Orchestra (with a text from speeches by President Kennedy) and Piano Sonata No. 6.