Composer, born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, EC England, UK. He studied in London (19558) and Paris (19589), taught at Cambridge and Yale universities, and became professor of music at Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts, Bard College, NY, in 1990. His music, traditional in idiom but original in expression, includes two comic operas, One Man Show (1964) and The Rising of the Moon (1970), two string quartets, and many orchestral works, including Spring Music (1983), Odyssey (1987), and Violin Concerto (1993).
Maw is best known for his orchestral piece Odyssey (1987), the guitar work Music of Memory (1989) and a violin concerto (1993) written for Joshua Bell.
In 2002, Maw's opera Sophie's Choice, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was premièred at the Royal Opera House under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, and received its North American premiere by the Washington National Opera in October of 2006. Mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, who sang Sophie in London, reprised the title role at the National Opera, joined by American baritone Rod Gilfry as Nathan Landau, the schizophrenic man who initially rescues Sophie and then persuades her to join him in a suicide pact.
A performance of Sophie's Choice took place in BBC's Maida Vale studios on December 9th, 2005, which was broadcast on BBC's Radio 3 on December 11, 2005.
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