JAVS Spring 2014

ber of pieces in the 70s that had taped accompani ment, and many of them had the soloist locked into compliance with strict tempos at all times, and I found this confining. In each of my pieces I strived to give the soloist plenty of rhythmic freedom here and there. Third, this allowed me to use sounds from nature in the pieces, such as a thunderstorm in the piano invention, or bird songs in the flute inven tion, or children’s voices in the viola invention. The other two chamber pieces that feature the viola are my Excursions , for violin and viola, and Cowboy Miniatures . The Excursions are written in a neo-classi cal/neo-baroque style and are in the form of a suite consisting of six movements: Overture, Tango, Chase, Devil Dance, Chorale, and Finale. They are not virtu osic but are challenging and very audience friendly. The Cowboy Miniatures is a set of ten popular cowboy songs. They were written as pedagogical pieces and are essentially duets with the easier student part on the bottom and the teacher’s part on the top. They are also available in a version for two violins and a version for two cellos and are punctuated with attractive illus trations of various cowboy paraphernalia. Sheet music for Biggs’s viola works is available from Consort Press at: http://consortpress.com/Orders.html. A recording of the Concerto for Viola, Woodwinds, and Percussion is available on the CD Paul Freeman Introduces John Biggs (Albany Records, TROY 394,

2000). This CD may be purchased directly from Consort Press, and sound clips may be heard at http://consortpress.com/Discography.html. Born in Los Angeles on October 18, 1932, John Biggs received his Master’s degree in composition from the University of California at Los Angeles, doing further study at the University of Southern California and the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp, Belgium. His teachers include Roy Harris, Lukas Foss, Ingolf Dahl, Flor Peeters, Halsey Stevens, and Leonard Stein. He has taught at Los Angeles City College, UCLA, and UC Berkeley and served as composer-in-residence to six col leges in Kansas under a grant from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. As a composer, he has won numerous awards and honors including a Rockefeller Grant, Fulbright Grant, Atwater-Kent Award, ASCAP “Serious Music Award” every year since 1974, and a number of “Meet the Composer” grants from diverse parts of the United States.

V OLUME 30 NUMBER 1 45