Larry Thomas Bell
*17 January 1952
Works by Larry Thomas Bell
Biography
Bell was born in Wilson, North Carolina. He began his music studies with piano lessons and soon after began playing in a rock band. He attended East Carolina University and Appalachian State University, where he worked with Gregory Kosteck and earned his Bachelor of Music degree in 1974. He then moved to New York, where he attended The Juilliard School, completing his Master of Music degree in 1977 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1982. While there he studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions. A Guggenheim Fellowship (1981), Rome Prize (1982–3), and a Rockefeller grant (1985) took him to Italy, to study, write music, and take piano lessons with Joseph Rollino. Bell began teaching while in college, at the Juilliard Pre-College division (1979–1983). Since then he has been a faculty member of The Boston Conservatory (1980–2005), the New England Conservatory (1992–2018), and the Berklee College of Music (since 2007). (wikipedia entry)
About the music
Influenced by Beethoven, Elliott Carter, and solfège pedagogue Renée Longy, his modernist early compositions (from the 1970s and 1980s) emphasized thematic development, polyphony, and elaborate polyrhythmic structures. In those years he began his performing career as a pianist and reconnected with American folk hymnody. Both of these choices led to a more tonal, melodically oriented, neo-Romantic style.[1] In more recent years, his speed of composition and frequency of piano performances have increased, resulting in multi-movement keyboard pieces in Baroque and classical forms, as well as works for orchestra and chorus, chamber music, solo keyboard music, and song cycles. All aspects of Bell's music are synthesized in his two-act opera Holy Ghosts, which was premiered in 2009.
