When the Orchestra of Northern New York performs the world premiere of Escapades for Orchestra and Soprano Saxophone, it will have a special guest in the audience. World-renowned composer John Anthony Lennon will visit Clayton and Potsdam from the West Coast for this special concert.
Lennon has been commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Theatre Chamber Players, the Library of Congress, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the National Endowment for the Arts Orchestral Consortium, the Fromm Foundation, the Kronos Quartet, and many other groups and institutions.
He has also been the recipient of numerous honors and prizes. In addition to the Rome Prize, he has received the Guggenheim, Friedheim, and Charles Ives Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Lennon has held fellowships at Tanglewood, the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Villa Montalvo, Yaddo, the Bolgiasco Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony as a Norlin Foundation Fellow. Other residencies have been at the Valparaiso Foundation in Spain, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, and the Camargo Foundation in France.
Reared in Mill Valley, California, Lennon earned a Bachelor's degree in Literature under Jesuit study at the University of San Francisco. He holds a Master's degree and a Doctorate from the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, and William Albright.
A professor of composition and theory at Emory University, he resides in San Rafael, California. His website is johnanthonylennon.com
The concert, conducted by Dr. Brian Doyle, also features works by Maurice Ravel, Carlos Simon, and Aaron Copland. Christopher Creviston, former faculty member of the Crane School of Music, will solo on soprano saxophone in the work by Lennon.
Tickets for the Saturday, September 2 concert at 7:30 pm at the Clayton Opera House may be purchased by calling 315-686-2200. Tickets for the Potsdam performance on Sunday, September 3 at 3 pm in Hosmer Hall, SUNY Potsdam can be obtained at onny.org or by calling 315-212-3440.
ONNY is sponsored, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the Northern New York Community Foundation.