{"value"=>"<p>David Amram (born 1930) is an American composer, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist active in classical, jazz, and folk music. As a youth he played the piano, trumpet and French horn, and developed a strong interest in music of all kinds. After a year at the Oberlin Conservatory (1948), where he studied the horn, Amram attended George Washington University, graduating in 1952 with a B.A. in history. He was engaged as a horn player with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. from 1951 to 1952, and then played with the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Europe. During his three years there he also toured as a soloist, performed with chamber ensembles, and took part in jazz jam sessions in Paris.</p> <p>Amram returned to the United States in 1955 and enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vittorio Giannini, and Gunther Schuller; he was also a member of the Manhattan Woodwind Quintet. Later, he was awarded honorary degrees from Moravian College (1979) and St. Lawrence University (1994).</p> <p>Amram's jazz career blossomed upon his return to the United States. One of the first musicians to play the French horn in jazz, he performed in Charles Mingus's Jazz Workshop and Oscar Pettiford's big band; and was befriended by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. In later years, he fronted groups featuring the saxophonists George Barrow, Jerry Dodgion, and Pepper Adams.</p> <p>Amram also formed friendships with Jack Kerouac (with whom he held the first jazz-poetry reading events), Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Hunter S. Thompson, and other writers of the \"Beat generation,\" and provided the score for and appeared in the film <span class=\"title\">Pull My Daisy</span> (1959).</p> <p>In 1956, Amram began a long association with Joseph Papp, producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, who commissioned incidental music from Amram for <span class=\"title\">Titus Andronicus</span>. From 1956 to 1967, Amram composed scores for 25 Shakespeare productions at the festival, and in 1968 completed his comic opera <span class=\"title\">Twelfth Night</span>. Among his many subsequent commissions for television, jazz bands, films and the theater were the incidental music for Archibald MacLeish's <span class=\"title\">J.B.</span>, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1959; Arthur Miller's <span class=\"title\">After the Fall</span> (1964); and the films <span class=\"title\">Splendor in the Grass</span> (1961), <span class=\"title\">The Manchurian Candidate</span> (1962), and <span class=\"title\">The Subject Was Roses</span> (1968).</p> <p>Amram was appointed the first composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic in 1966, and in 1972 he was the conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonia's youth concerts. He undertook several musical tours, some sponsored by the United States Information Agency, including of Brazil in 1969; Kenya in 1975 (with the World Council of Churches); Cuba in 1977 with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Earl Hines; and the Middle East in 1978. He became music director of the International Jewish Arts Festival in 1982.</p> <p>Amram has published over 60 compositions for choral groups, opera, orchestra, band, piano, chamber groups, and vocal or instrumental soloists, and often conducts his own works. He has participated in the annual Farm Aid benefits with Willie Nelson, the Kerrville Folk Festival, and other folk festivals, and he frequently collaborated with Pete and Toshi Seeger to benefit their Hudson River Sloop Clearwater organization.</p> <p>Amram is the author of three memoirs: <span class=\"title\">Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram</span> (1968), <span class=\"title\">Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac</span> (2002), and <span class=\"title\">Upbeat: The Nine Lives of a Musical Cat</span> (2007), as well as many articles and essays on musical topics and the people he has worked with in his career.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>The David Amram papers, dating from 1937 to 2011, most strongly represent the musician's career path from the 1950s through the early 2000s, documenting his compositions, performances, conducting, writings, and business matters. They also evidence Amram's relationships with other musicians and writers, including Jack Kerouac and other \"Beat generation\" figures, who are documented by a small amount of correspondence, and by Amram's own writings.</p> <p>The collection holds personal and professional correspondence; subject files; scores; writings; chronological files of clippings, contracts, financial papers, press releases, and programs; photographs; scrapbooks; datebooks and schedules; posters; awards and honorary degrees; school papers; art; and ephemera. Correspondence, scrapbooks, subject files, scores, writings, and programs comprise the bulk of the collection.</p> <p>Correspondence, dating from 1943 to 2008, is in two sections: a set of mostly personal letters from notable individuals; and personal and professional correspondence with friends, musicians, presenters, conductors, orchestras, publishers, schools, and Amram's managers (Barna Ostertag and Ed Keane). The notable individuals file includes significant content from Arthur Miller, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Pete Seeger, Gunther Schuller, Ron Whitehead, Leo Block, Carolyn Cassady, Herbert Gold, and Elia Kazan. Other writers with fewer letters present include Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson.</p> <p>Of the rest of the correspondence, the earliest (dated 1943-1954) consists of letters between Amram and his family, friends, and schools. Most correspondence from the mid-1950s onward relates to professional matters such as commissions and engagements, but some is personal, including letters from Rudolf Serkin, Willie Nelson, Theodore Bikel, Richie Havens, Jutta Hipp, Joachim Berendt, and Rufus Harley. See the scrapbooks and subject files for additional correspondence, both personal and professional.</p> <p>The subject files document projects and events of all kinds through correspondence, contracts, flyers, programs, clippings, and photographs. Subjects include the New York Shakespeare Festival; Amram's trips to Brazil (1969), Cuba (1977), Latin America (1977), and the Middle East (1978); plays such as <span class=\"title\">J.B.</span>, <span class=\"title\">After the Fall</span>, <span class=\"title\">The Changeling</span>, and <span class=\"title\">Herakles</span>; films such as <span class=\"title\">Pull My Daisy</span>, <span class=\"title\">Seven Days In May</span>, and <span class=\"title\">The Manchurian Candidate</span>; the commissioning and performances of Amram's compositions; publishing and copyright information; and conferences, festivals, and other public events. Also present are short promotional biographies of Amram. Documentation of many of these topics can also be found in the chronological files.</p> <p>The scores are for forty-two works, dating from 1958 to 2009. They contain sketches, drafts, finished and annotated holographs, and copyist scores and parts. Most of the scores are for concert music. They range from Amram's first-performed works, such as the <span class=\"title\">Trio for Tenor Saxophone, Bassoon, and French Horn</span> (1958), <span class=\"title\">Autobiography for Strings</span> (1960) and the <span class=\"title\">Sonata Allegro for String Orchestra</span> (1959); to later compositions such as the opera <span class=\"title\">Twelfth Night</span> (1968), the <span class=\"title\">Triple Concerto for Woodwind Quartet, Brass Quintet, Jazz Quintet, and Orchestra</span> (1970), and <span class=\"title\">Three Songs: A Concerto for Piano and Orchestra</span> (2009). Other works present include the <span class=\"title\">Bassoon Concerto</span>, <span class=\"title\">Concerto for Horn and Orchestra</span>, the opera <span class=\"title\">The Final Ingredient</span>, and the chamber orchestra pieces <span class=\"title\">The American Bell</span> and <span class=\"title\">Shakespearean Concerto</span>. Program notes or essays regarding some compositions can be found in the subject files.</p> <p>The scores also include music written for theater, film, and dance. Theater music includes material written for the New York Shakespeare Festival's productions of <span class=\"title\">The Merchant of Venice</span> (1964), <span class=\"title\">Twelfth Night</span> (1958, later incorporated into Amram's operatic version), <span class=\"title\">As You Like It</span> (1961), and <span class=\"title\">Hamlet</span> (1964). Also present are scores for the ballet <span class=\"title\">Amerimusica</span> (1992), written for the National Dance Institute; music Amram composed for the film <span class=\"title\">Seven Days In May</span> (1964); and lead sheets used by Amram in jazz performance. These consist of jazz standards and music by Amram, Paquito D'Rivera, and Pepper Adams.</p> <p>Amram's writings are well-documented by annotated manuscripts, typescripts, drafts, and galleys of books, articles, essays, speeches, program notes, liner notes, plays, and poetry, some unpublished. Books documented include <span class=\"title\">Vibrations</span>, <span class=\"title\">Offbeat</span>, <span class=\"title\">Upbeat</span>, and two early unpublished novels. The essays and articles include memoirs of and tributes to friends such as Lord Buckley, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, Philip Lamantia, Hunter S. Thompson, Gregory Corso, Clifford Brown, and Arthur Miller. Other essay and speech topics include jazz and poetry, Judaic studies, the creative process, and farming.</p> <p>Additionally, the writings hold interview transcripts. The most significant of these are oral histories of Amram carried out by Yale University and the American Jewish Committee (with Amram's annotations). Also present are shorter interviews dating from the 1960s to 2004.</p> <p>The chronological files, dating from 1939 to 2006, contain clippings; contracts and financial papers; press releases; and programs and flyers. The clippings, programs, and flyers offer comprehensive coverage of Amram's performances and other public appearances from 1957 forward. Additional programs, dating from the 1950s and earlier, can be found in the scrapbooks. Contracts and financial papers can also be found in the correspondence (and business correspondence also appears among the contracts).</p> <p>Photographs, dating from the 1950s to the 2000s, include formal and informal portraits of Amram; images of him performing or conducting; with other musicians; and with family or friends. Those pictured with Amram include Joseph Papp, Bob Dylan, George Plimpton, Dizzy Gillespie, the Marlboro Trio, Pepper Adams, and George Barrow. Photographs can also be found in the scrapbooks and subject files. Most are black and white prints, but color prints and a few slides are also present. See the container list for more details.</p> <p>Scrapbooks date from the 1930s to 2010. They contain correspondence, programs, clippings, and photographs, in varying proportions. Some consist primarily of photographs, while others are mostly personal and professional correspondence. Photographs in the scrapbooks include Amram with Jack Kerouac, Percy Heath, Elvin Jones, and Ray Bryant, as well as a signed photograph of Pablo Casals. The scrapbooks also hold letters to or from Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, the Rockefeller Foundation, Al Aranowitz, Carlos Moseley, and Lucas Foss, as well as correspondence with friends or fans.</p> <p>Calendars, datebooks, and schedules date from 1972 to 1998. Two undated address books can also be found with them.</p> <p>Posters, dating from 1962 to 2011, advertise appearances and performances by Amram, as well as plays or films for which he wrote music. They include a caricature of Shakespeare characters signed by Joseph Papp.</p> <p>The school papers cover Amram's childhood and his time at the Putney School in Vermont (1945-1948), Oberlin Conservatory (1948-1949), and George Washington University (1949-1952). They consist mostly of notes, reports, and papers.</p> <p>Art, dating from the 1940s to 2004, is by Amram, his friends, and children taught by Amram in workshops. Amram's work consists of pencil and ink sketches of himself and his colleagues, some of them caricatures. Work by others are portraits of Amram (including an oil painting) and other musicians, as well as abstract works. They include watercolors, ink drawings, and photographs.</p> <p>Ephemera consists of ID cards and souvenir buttons from concerts, festivals, and other public events at which Amram appeared.</p>"}