Karl Kohn
{{Short description|American composer (1926–2024)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Karl Kohn
| image_size =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1926|8|1|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Vienna, Austria
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|11|18|1926|8|1|mf=y}}
| death_place = Claremont, California, U.S.
| occupation = Composer, pianist
| spouse =
| employer = Pomona College
}}
Karl Georg Kohn (August 1, 1926 – November 18, 2024) was an Austrian-born American composer, teacher and pianist. He taught at Pomona College for more than 40 years.
Biography
Kohn began playing the piano as a child in Vienna; after he emigrated to the United States at the age of 13, he continued his education at the New York College of Music (1940–1944){{cite book|title=The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|author=Steve Metcalf|isbn=1-56159-174-2|publisher=Macmillan Publishers Ltd.|place=London|year=1980|article=Kohn, Karl|editor=Stanley Sadie|volume=20}} and at Harvard (B.A., M.A.) where he studied composition with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Randall Thompson.Pollack, Howard (1992). Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. {{ISBN|0-8108-2493-0}}. He was W. M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Pomona College, where he taught for over forty years.{{Cite web |url=http://www.music.pomona.edu/faculty/kohn.shtml |title=Pomona College Department of Music |access-date=2009-07-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081220214941/http://www.music.pomona.edu/faculty/kohn.shtml |archive-date=2008-12-20 |url-status=dead }} His students at Pomona included Douglas Leedy, David Noon, Nancy Raabe (Miller), and Susan Morton Blaustein as well as, privately, Frank Zappa{{Cite web |url=http://www.pomona.edu/magazine/pcmwin01/MUmilieu.shtml |title=PCM Online > Winter 2001 |access-date=2009-07-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100528023615/http://www.pomona.edu/Magazine/PCMwin01/MUmilieu.shtml |archive-date=2010-05-28 |url-status=dead }} and John McGuire.
With his wife, Margaret Kohn, he had a long career as a duo-pianist in the United States and in Europe, with a repertoire focused on major 20th century works by Debussy, Bartók, Berio, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ligeti, Reich, and Boulez. Kohn played in the US premiere of Boulez's Structures together with the composer.
Kohn's own works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestras, the Oakland Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, on the San Francisco Symphony's Musica Viva series, at the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles (Kohn served for two decades on the board of directors of the Monday Evening Concerts), and in concerts and broadcasts throughout the United States and abroad.
Kohn died in Claremont, California on November 18, 2024, at age 98.{{cite news |title=In Memoriam: Karl Kohn, Emeritus Professor and Composer-in-Residence |url=https://www.pomona.edu/news/2024/11/21-memoriam-karl-kohn-emeritus-professor-and-composer-residence |access-date=23 November 2024 |publisher=Pomona College |date=21 November 2024}}
Compositions
Kohn composed in all major genres of concert music.{{Cite web |url=http://www.music.pomona.edu/faculty/kohnworks.shtml |title=Pomona College Department of Music |access-date=2009-07-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080517095753/http://www.music.pomona.edu/faculty/kohnworks.shtml |archive-date=2008-05-17 |url-status=dead }} His work uses a unique collage-like style, in which individual instruments or groups of instruments project themselves from the surrounding events. His music cannot easily be immediately identified as either European or American in character, as it uses both the resources of his deep engagement in the European classical traditional as well as a more empirical approach to his materials.http://www.ewc.at/ewc_komponisten/more.php?id=15&COMPOSER=29e1082145a9b59192bbbdeaf1546854{{Dead link|date=February 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{cite web |url=http://www.music.pomona.edu/orchestra/koh_conc.htm |title=Kohn notes |accessdate=2006-09-01 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901143014/http://www.music.pomona.edu/orchestra/koh_conc.htm |archivedate=2006-09-01 }}{{cite web |last1=Wolf |first1=Daniel |title=Renewable Music: Karl Kohn |url=http://renewablemusic.blogspot.com/2006/08/karl-kohn.html |website=renewablemusic.blogspot.com |date=1 August 2006}}
Karl Kohn's principal publishers are Carl Fischer Music, New York, GunMar Music, Inc., (from Shawnee Press, Delaware Water Gap, PA), Edition Contemp Art, Vienna, and Material Press, Frankfurt am Main.
References
External links
- {{discogs artist|Karl Kohn (2)}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kohn, Karl}}
Category:20th-century American classical composers
Category:20th-century American male musicians
Category:21st-century American classical composers
Category:21st-century American male musicians
Category:American male classical composers
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:New York College of Music alumni
Category:Pupils of Walter Piston
Category:Pomona College faculty