Marjorie Ann Hess a.k.a. Maura Bosch (born 1956) is an American composer. She was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Hartt College of Music where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1978, and at Princeton University where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. in 2008, after studying with Alexander Lepak, Edward T. Cone, Milton Babbitt and Peter Westergaard.

Career

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She married composer Jeffrey Brooks and lived for a while in Bath, England, where Brooks was composer-in-residence at Bath College. After returning to the United States, the couple settled in Minneapolis. She co-founded and ran Corn Palace Productions, a Minneapolis music theatre company, from 1990 through 1997. The company produced dozens of new works, including three of her own operas. One of them was based on a poem by James Merrill, with whom she collaborated in writing the libretto. She also founded and played with the ensemble Blackstone Bosch from 1997 until 2000.[1]

In 2007 Maura Bosch was in residence with the Tubman Family Alliance, a network of shelters for abused women, to compose a work based on their experiences.[2][3]

In 2009, Maura Bosch composed and wrote the libretto for her fourth opera, Art and Desire, about a fictional meeting between Lee Krasner and Clement Greenberg twenty years after the death of Krasner's husband, Jackson Pollock.[4]

Works

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Bosch has composed works in a variety of genres including choral, vocal and instrumental works and opera. Selected compositions include:

  • The Disappearance of Luisa Porto, opera (1989)
  • Mirabell’s Book of Numbers, opera (1991)
  • The Damnation of Felicity, opera (1994)
  • 3 Hymns (1995)
  • My Purity (1995)
  • Zelda Songs (1997)
  • Bronte Songs (1996)
  • The Oxen (1993)
  • Santuario (1992) for orchestra
  • About the Night (1993) for string quartet
  • The Turning, cantata (2007)[5]
  • Art and Desire, opera (2009)

Bosch has published a text:

  • Everyone can compose music (2008) Princeton University

References

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  1. ^ "A Holiday Festival for Chorus and Harp" (PDF). Retrieved 30 January 2011.
  2. ^ The Voice of Chorus America: Volume 30. Chorus America. 2006.
  3. ^ Sounding board: Volume 34, Issues 4-6. American Composers Forum. 2007.
  4. ^ UW Opera Props News February-March 2009.
  5. ^ "Cantus". Retrieved 30 January 2011.