|
Composer Malcolm Caluori
|
|
Born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan, Malcolm Caluori's interest in music reaches back to his childhood. He would spend hours sitting with his little record player, snooping through his older sister's piano lesson books and toying around at the household organ himself. Although he later began his own lessons for a short time, it wasn't until high school that he became fully engaged in music. He joined the high school concert and marching band, and later the choir, and by his senior year, half of his curriculum was musical. He also became a fixture on the dramatic stage, regularly performing leading roles in plays and musicals. By the age of 16, he knew that he wanted to be a composer.
He became involved with the Battle Creek Community Chorus, and for the next several years, under Chorus Director Roger Sweet, he would sharpen his skills at vocal interpretation and technique. At the same time he became a member of the Glassmen Drum and Bugle Corp from Toledo, Ohio, and spent the next six summers touring as an accomplished brass soloist. Under the loving wing of Brass Caption Head David Tippett and a fine staff of instructors, including director Dan Acheson, who later went on to become the Executive Director of Drum Corps International, the drum corps experience gave him an attitude of determination and discipline, and together with his chorus work, exposure to more serious music making and artistic sensitivity. The firey dramatics of drum corps brass arrangements left an eternal impression on the passionate and epic sound of Caluori's developing compositional style.
During these impressionable years, Caluori befriended classmate Johnathan Daniel Steppe, and a bond which has endured for years began. Upon his high school graduation, his Drama Director gave him a gift of a Cross pencil, for his music, she said. Shortly after graduation, Johnathan suggested that they begin work on a new musical, Dangerous Liaisons. The collaboration that followed was a ten year journey in discovering their own way, and their surprising talents. The entire hefty score to Dangerous Liaisons would be written over those ten years using that Cross pencil.
|
Caluori was entering composition competitions each year, and was consistantly awarded. One year the judge broke his annonymity when he read Caluori's note accompanying his entry which mentioned that he had no formal training in composition. Brooks Grantier, the director of the Battle Creek Boychoir, the only boychoir in the state of Michigan, thereafter became a musical mentor to the young Malcolm Caluori, and met with him regularly to offer encouragement and instruction in theory.
By this point, Caluori already had experienced working with local musical organizations, seeking the performance of his works, which ranged from choral and orchestral music to keyboard music and chamber works for smaller ensambles, often with himself conducting. His final premiere before moving from Michigan was a performance of "A Canticle for Our Times", a response to the Gulf War and the only time he let his compositional work stray from the Dangerous Liaisons it was so usually focussed upon. Written for choir and string orchestra, the Canticle was performed with the Battle Creek Boychoir, and an enthusiastic Brooks Grantier was proud to conduct the piece.
|
He relocated to Boston after receiving a scholarship to the Berkley School of Music. But throughout his life, his educational style has always been to take in however he may. He has always studied on his own from books on musical form, harmony, orchestration, notation, history; He listens to all kinds of music, and learns from the great masters, studying recordings and orchestral scores.
Caluori has since settled, at least for the time being, in Atlanta. Now a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and a composer with BMI music publisher Melpomene Music Group, he has discovered a love and a special talent for writing for the theatre, and for setting dramatic text and situations. He regards his talents as a gift, one which he has an obligation to excersize. Beyond Dangerous Liaisons, we can expect to look forward to further swoons and thrills from a certain Cross pencil.
TOP: In his Atlanta home, Malcolm Caluori works on arranging a piano reduction of the score to Dangerous Liaisons.
MIDDLE: A 1992 portrait of Malcolm Caluori with collaborator Johnathan Daniel Steppe.
BOTTOM: Caluori (seated) with Brooks Grantier (far left) and members of the Battle Creek Boychoir.
(MORE PICTURES BELOW)
|
|
|
|
Composer Malcolm Caluori