Artist description A living American composer who works in the Boston area.

Music Style Modern

Musical Influences Many. See bio.

Artist History William Thomas McKinley has achieved a place—along with his exact contemporaries John Corigliano and John Harbison (all three were born in 1938)—as one of the most distinguished and widely-performed American composers of his generation. A man of wide interests and tremendous energy, McKinley sustains a multifaceted career. As jazz pianist, he has recorded with such icons as Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Miroslav Vitous, and Gary Burton. As impresario, he founded and directs the Master Musicians Collective, which has issued dozens of acclaimed premiere recordings of modern and contemporary music. As teacher and mentor (for twenty years Professor of Composition and Jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music), he has provided guidance and inspiration to many fine young composers.But most of all, as composer McKinley has poured forth a stream of music for all sorts of ensembles, large and small—over 240 works so far—that radiates the confidence and mastery of a large-souled and exuberant creative imagination. Recent premieres include a violin concerto, Seasons of Prague, performed by the Prague Radio Symphony in 1995; Crazy Rags, played at Alice Tully Hall by Concordia and the Sirius String Quartet in 1996; and a flute concerto, Goldberg Variations, given a first performance by flautist Bernard Goldberg and the New Jersey Symphony with conductor Glen Cortese. .Recordings of McKinley’s music have appeared in abundance recently also. His Third Piano Concerto was recorded for MMC by pianist Marjorie Mitchell and the Slovak Radio Symphony. Two recordings with Richard Stoltzman (the Clarinet Sonata with pianist Irma Vallencillo, and the Second Clarinet Concerto with the Berlin Radio Symphony under Lukas Foss) were released on RCA, while MMC issued his Third Clarinet Concerto (also with Stoltzman) and his Second Viola Concerto (with violist Karen Dreyfus).A complete list of McKinley’s pieces, the awards they have won, the musicians who have performed them, and their recordings, would fill pages—and would quickly be out of date, so productive and vital are this composer’s energies. William Thomas McKinley: A Bio-Bibliography, by Jeffrey Sposato (Greenwood Press) documents McKinley’s career through the mid 1990s.

Instruments Composer, Piano

Albums See Sposato, Jeffrey "William Thomas McKinley: A bio-bibliography" (Greenwood Press, 1995).

Press Reviews See Sposato, Jeffrey "William Thomas McKinley: A bio-bibliography" (Greenwood Press, 1995).

Location Reading, MA - USA

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