Kramer's orchestral work Rewind was featured in the October 2003 concert of the Santa Monica Symphony, with Allen Robert Gross, Conductor & Music Director, a friend since their college days.

Jonathan Kramer said that was the best he had ever heard his work played and it was the last time he heard his music in live performance, however he was able to enjoy it afterwards on the archival DVD.

Jonathan Kramer says of his delightful concert piece Rewind
"When I was an adolescent, I was a musical elitist. For my friends, dance music was rock; for me it was ballet. Vernacular music--whether pop or jazz--never felt like MY music. I eventually came to accept, however, that my music wants to swing. Rewind shows some of the ways a self-conscious art-music composer tried to shed his elitism and embrace the music that most Americans know and love."

To see how wonderfully Rewind swings under the baton of Maestro Gross, with Jonathan there to enjoy it: Here is a QuickTime clip from the rehearsal of Rewind

Kramer wrote 25 books and over 50 articles and was program annotator for San Francisco Symphony, the National Orchestral Association, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Cincinnati Symphony. In 1988, his books The Time of Music and Listen to the Music were published in America, and the latter was subsequently published abroad and in translation. He edited Time in Contemporary Musical Thought which was published in 1993. At the time of his death in the spring of 2004, he was completing a book on music and postmodernism.

In The Time of Music, Kramer analyses how the left and right sides of the brain process music differently. An excellent evaluation of this by Kyle Gann can be found in the Village Voice June 15, 2004 http://villagevoice.com/issues/0424/gann.php4, "Remembering Jonathan Kramer, a true scholar of listening: Felling the Wall"

Professor Kramer taught at Columbia University from 1988. He also taught at the University of California Berkeley 1969-70, Oberlin Conservatory 1970-71, Yale University 1971-78, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music 1978-90.

Jonathan Kramer studied with Pierre Boulez, Leon Kirchner and Billy Jim Layton at Harvard University, where he earned his BA in 1965. He then did post-graduate studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the University of California at Davis in 1966-67 and with Jean-Claude Eloy, Richard Felciano, Andrew W. Imbrie, Roger Sessions, and Seymour Shifrin at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his MA in 1967 and his PhD in 1969. Jonathan Kramer also studied computer music with John Chowning at Stanford University in 1967-68.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A BRIEF, DELIGHTFUL QUICKTIME MOVIE CLIP FROM THE DIGITAL VIDEO DOCUMENTARY DONE BY DR. D'LYNN WALDRON OF THE REHEARSALS AND PERFORMANCE BY MAESTRO ALLEN ROBER GROSS OF JONATHAN KRAMER'S REWIND IN OCTOBER 2003 WITH JONATHAN KRAMER THERE.

APPRECIATION ON HIS 60th BIRTHDAY IN 2002, in THE VILLAGE VOICE by Kyle Gann
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0213/gann.php

AN ANALYSIS OF KRAMER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE LEFT AND RIGHT SIDES OF THE BRAIN PROCESS MUSIC DIFFERENTLY, in THE VILLAGE VOICE by Kyle Gann
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0424/gann.php

SELECT LIST OF WORKS

STAGE: For Broken Piano, Truck, Shaving Cream, Fruit Salad, Toilet, Wife, San Francisco, Color TV, and, tape, slide projections, 1969-70; Blue Music, actor, tape, 1970-72; An Imaginary Dance, tape, slide projections, 1970-73; Irrealities, 2 dancers, tape, slide projections, 1970-73; Fanfare, 2 actors, tape, 1973-76; En noir et blanc, actor, dancer, piano (2 players), 1988

ORCHESTRAL: Variations, symphonic band, 1967-69; Requiem for the Innocent, 1970; Moving Music, 13 clarinets, 1975-76; Moments in and out of Time, 1981-83; Musica pro Musica, 1986-87; About Face, 1988-89; Remembrance of a People (text by Roger Goodman), speaker ad libitum, piano, string orchestra, 1996 (version of chamber work); Rewind, 2000; Obsessions, symphonic band, 2001

CHAMBER MUSIC: Three Pieces, clarinet, 1965-66; Septet, flute, oboe, bassoon, harp, violin, viola, cello, 1968; One for Five in Seven, Mostly, flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, bassoon, 1971; Five Studies on Six Notes, guitar, 1978 (version of harpsichord work; also version for 3 percussion, 1980); Licks, 3 double basses, 1980-81 (also version with tape, 1980-81); Atlanta Licks, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, 1984; Another Anniversary (player also speaks text by Barney Childs), clarinet, 1989; Another Sunrise, flute, oboe, bassoon, viola, cello, piano, percussion, 1990; A Game, cello, piano, 1988-92; Notta Sonata, 2 pianos, 2-3 percussion, 1992-93; Serbelloni Serenade, clarinet, violin, piano, 1995; Remembrance of a People (text by Roger Goodman), speaker ad libitum, string quartet, double bass, piano, 1996 (also version for piano, string orchestra); Surreality Check, violin, cello, piano, 1998; Imbrication, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, 2000; Imagined Ancestors, clarinet, violin, cello, piano 4 hands, 2002-03

CHORAL: No Beginning, No End (text by Peretz Markish [translated by Armand Schwerner]), mixed chorus, orchestra, 1982-83; Into the Labyrinth (text by Molly Myerowitz), mixed chorus, piano, 1985-86

PIANO: Music for Piano I, 1966; Music for Piano II, 1967; Music for Piano III, 1968; Music for Piano IV, 1969-72; Five Tunes, 1970-78; Music for Piano V, 1979-80; Music for Piano VI, ‘Whirled Piece’, 1997

HARPSICHORD: Five Studies on Six Notes, 1976-77 (also versions for guitar; 3 percussion); The Sunrise Sonata, 1984-85

ELECTROACOUSTIC: The Canons of Blackearth, 4 percussion, tape, 1972-73; Renascence, clarinet, tape, tape delay system, 1974 (also versions for clarinet, tape, 1977, revised 1985; clarinet, computer, 1997)


It was my pleasure to know Jonathan Kramer and it saddens me greatly that I will not be seeing him again.
D'Lynn Waldron, June 2004

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