JOHN BEALL

VANDALIA SUITE The Vandalia Suite is a work in progress. I am seeking to write a group of short piano pieces for my longtime friend, pianist Steven Smith and three pieces are currently ready to perform. Most of the pieces are related to places or events in West Virginia or the Appalachian Mountains. The Gorge is a reflection of a day spent in the New River Gorge at Thurmond, WV, in 2001, hearing the silence interrupted by a passing train. The Nocturne is a left hand study, a moody piece of night music. Its setting is not related to a particular place. Glade Creek is the stream in the famous photograph of the mill at Babcock State Park near Clifftop, WV, a swiftly rushing bit of whitewater heard here as a brilliant right hand study.

Composer John Beall was born in Belton, Texas, in 1942, and grew up in the coastal city Beaumont. He studied composition at Baylor University and at the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Samuel Adler. While at Eastman he received the 1972 Louis Lane and 1973 Howard Hanson Prizes for his compositions. Since 1978 Mr. Beall has been Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence at West Virginia University. Summers are spent teaching at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

Critical acclaim for his music ranges from The Charleston Gazette ("It is a lyrical piece [Spruce Knob], soft and mysterious at the beginning and end. The music's architecture is compelling. Beall's deft orchestration - including the sighing strings and clarinet in the waltz and engaging horn passages - showed the Clay Center's rich but not clinical clarity of sound.") to the NY Concert Review ("Wolf of Summer" was hauntingly nostalgic, incorporating zither-like effects on the strings, hypnotic repetition of notes, and even a half-remembered reminiscence of a Chopin melodic fragment, surely a moment worthy of Charles Ives.").

In 1990 he was named Benedum Distinguished Scholar for the Arts and Humanities by West Virginia University and has been an annual winner of Serious Music Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). His music is published by MMB Music, Inc., Carl Fischer, and Southern Music Co. and recordings can be found on Crystal Cambria, and E.R.M. Media.