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Periodically Walter-Simmons.com will feature a particular
composer whose music we think you will enjoy. There will be a
brief description, a sample of his work, and some links that will
help you pursue further information. You may also search our database
for my writings on the composer. If you have any questions or
comments, we’d love to hear from you.
Previous Featured Composers: Lee
Hoiby, Robert Muczynski, Arnold
Rosner, Daniel Catán,
Robert Kurka, and Paul
Moravec.
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Our currently featured composer is Samuel
Zyman. Zyman is one of today’s leading composers whose music
follows traditional formal and developmental practices. Born in Mexico
City in 1956, Zyman came to the United States in 1981, and entered
the Juilliard School, where he studied with Stanley Wolfe, Roger Sessions,
and David Diamond. He is currently a member of the Juilliard faculty.
Like Daniel Catán, one of our previously featured composers,
Zyman draws upon both his Jewish heritage and his own Mexican
nationality. However, most of his music pursues an international, classically-oriented
neo-romanticism, characterized by a driving rhythmic vitality, as well
by as a haunting lyricism. Zyman has composed symphonies, concertos,
a string quartet, and other chamber and vocal music. A recent highly-publicized
success is the music he wrote for the award-winning film La Otra
Conquista, which concerns the 16th-century conquest of the Aztecs
by Hernando Cortés and his small army. The theme music for the
film is a song called “Mater Aeterna,” which can be heard in a performance
by Plácido Domingo on YouTube
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Listen to a brief excerpt from Cycles
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free Windows Media Player 10 if you don't have
it on your computer.
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