composer

Born in 1953, English bred Peter Child moved across the Atlantic through an exchange scholarship to land at Reed College. After receiving his B.A., the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship allowed Child to spend a year studying Karnatic music in Madras. He returned to the US and, after studying with the likes of William Albright, Bernard Barrell, Arthur Berger, and Martin Boykan, received his Ph.D. in musical composition from Brandeis University in 1981. Child has accrued a voluminous amount of commissions and awards through out his career. These feats include receiving the Margaret Grant Memorial Prize from Tanglewood, East and West Artists' First Prize, a Music of Changes award, and two Composition Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artist Foundation.

Recently awarded an American Symphony Orchestra League-Meet the Composer "Music Alive" residency with the Albany Symphony Orchestra; he also serves as composer-in-residence for the New England Philharmonic Orchestra, both until 2008. Child's music ranges widely from orchestra to computer synthesis and compositionally has been compared to Ives, Britten, and Mahler.

Performances

Sangita: The Spirit of India
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | May 27, 2011
Concert Details
Club Concert #2
Moonshine Room at Club Café | February 7, 2006
Concert Details

News and Press

[Concert Review] BMOP on Indian Inspired Music

Indian music in the classical world seems somehow out of place. With some exceptions, notably Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha or John Harbison’s Mirabai Songs, and after Ravi Shankar and George Harrison, the advent of Bollywood and — most recently — the huge success of Slumdog Millionaire (Jai Ho seems to be on infinite repeat at almost every wedding I’ve been to, Indian and non-), India seems to have pervaded pop culture more than anything else. So the Boston Modern Orchestra Project concert at NEC’s Jordan Hall on the evening of May 27 raised intrigue.

Boston Musical Intelligencer Full review
[Concert Review] BMOP channels India in season-ending show

"Sangita: The Spirit of India’’ was the title of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s season-ending concert Friday night at Jordan Hall. And the program was as dense as the hot, humid, subcontinent-like weather outside, with world premieres by three New England-based composers and a North American premiere by early-20th-century English composer John Foulds.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Concert Review] Boston Modern Orchestra Project: Ziporyn, Foulds, Child, Shende

I had been looking forward to this concert ever since I saw an earlier misprint last September claiming Sangita would be performed in November. The BMOP site finally posted the right date. Ever since I heard the Modern Jazz Quartet's “Music From the Third Stream” album, I've always held my breath, anticipating the performance of the next composition embracing cultural or aesthetic fusion. Would I be treated to a work of great beauty, depth and complexity, or assaulted by a failed attempt that crashed on the shoals, maybe near something deep, but drowning nonetheless?

Fine Arts Full review
[News Coverage] Projecting the 'Spirit of India'
Tonight’s concert “Sangita: The Spirit of India’’ marks the end of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s season, and it’s been a busier one than usual. Until fairly recently, BMOP’s season consisted of a sequence of Jordan Hall concerts. Now that series is merely one part of a flood of activity that includes a series of chamber concerts at clubs, opera productions, and, this season, concerts at Tufts University and Wellesley and Bowdoin colleges.
The Boston Globe Full review