Raymond Luedeke

Son of Otto Luedeke, an officer in the US Army and a competitor in the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games, Raymond Luedeke had a peripatetic childhood.

Between the ages of 5 and 8, he lived in Japan.

He alludes that his first concert of classical music was heard in Tokyo and that the music was Japanese classical music.

He began piano lessons in Japan but did not continue this until the family was living in Massachusetts, where he took up the clarinet at the age of nine.

He was soon composing his first pieces, something he continued when the family moved to New Jersey.

Raymond Luedeke (born 1944) is an American / Canadian composer of contemporary classical music.

Praised for his idiosyncratic instrumental writing and for his orchestration, Luedeke has more recently concentrated on works for music theatre.

In 1966 Luedeke received his bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music, majoring in Music History.

The following year he attended the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, on a Fulbright Grant, studying composition and clarinet.

From 1967 to 1971 Ray Luedeke was a member of the United States Air Force Band, these being the years of the Vietnam War and the draft.

While in Washington, D.C., he studied orchestration with Lawrence T. Odom (arranger and harpist with the USAF Band), wrote and arranged music for the Band, and received his M. Music in composition from The Catholic University of America.

Later, he would study with George Crumb at Dartmouth and receive his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Northwestern University, where he studied with Alan Stout.

From 1971 to19 74, Luedeke taught at The University of Wisconsin / Stevens Point, from 1974 to 1976 at Northwestern University, and from 1976 to 1981 at University of Missouri-Kansas City.

While at Northwestern he was co-founder of The Twittering Machine, a contemporary music ensemble based at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

In Kansas City he was conductor of The Kansas City Civic Orchestra and of the UMKC student orchestra and director of The Kansas City Contemporary Players

From 1981 until 2010 Raymond Luedeke was Associate Principal Clarinet of the Toronto Symphony.

While in that position, he won a Canada wide contest to compose an orchestral fanfare that would open Roy Thomson Hall, since 1982 the home of the TSO.

He would later receive numerous grants from Canadian Arts Coumcils, (Canada Council for the Arts, Laidlaw Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council)

The music of Ray Luedeke, along with traditional elements, incorporates a variety of the techniques of 20th and 21st Century music, including metric modulation, extended or ambiguous tonality, spatial notation, and the harmonic use of pitch sets.

A good deal of his music is inspired by poetry, particularly that of Pablo Neruda and of William Carlos Williams.

Some of his music includes references to the music of non-Western cultures, to Japanese classical music, to African drumming, and to the Indonesian gamelan.

In Kevin Vigil's doctoral thesis on the guitar music of Raymond Luedeke, the composer is asked if he has had style periods, given the variety of forms found in his music: He replies that his style is to be found in his musical line and in his personal concept of counterpoint, rather than in his musical vocabulary, which may vary.

He compares his music to poetry, in which metaphors may be interpreted in various ways.

He does not accept the concept of absolute music, of music that only refers to itself.

Without being programmatic, his music has a narrative that can suggest a variety of interpretations.

Although born in New York City, he spent 29 years as Associate Principal Clarinet with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a position he left in 2010.

A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, Ray Luedeke is artistic director of Voice Afire Opera-Cabaret in New York City.