Kenneth Frazelle

Kenneth Frazelle (born December 2, 1955) is an American composer.

Frazelle was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina, United States.

Both his parents were from small tobacco farms near Richlands, North Carolina.

His mother, Olive Ann Shaw, was a civil service employee at nearby Marine Corps base Camp LeJeune.

His father, Kenneth Henry Frazelle, untrained but musical, died in 1962 from alcohol related illness.

In the earliest years the family played musical guessing games and had a toy piano at home.

The composer's mother was an excellent provider and realized the importance of music, art, and dance lessons for each of her children.

At age eight Frazelle began private piano studies.

He began composing at the age of ten and also played both flute and bassoon in middle school band.

The composer left home at fifteen to attend the North Carolina School of the Arts (now the University of North Carolina School of the Arts) in Winston-Salem.

His principle composition teacher was Robert Ward.

The composition department at Juilliard in the 1970s has been described as entering a "golden age," and Frazelle was among "some of the most talented composers of the younger generation," including Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Tobias Picker, Todd Machover, George Tsontakis, Larry Bell, Daron Hagen, Joel Hoffman, Richard Danielpour, Eric Ewazen and Bruce Adolphe.

He was graduated from NCSA's high school in 1974.

Frazelle was accepted into the Juilliard School in 1974.

Roger Sessions, his composition teacher for four years, had a profound influence on issues of musical gesture, contrapuntal discourse, and the integrity of musical form.

The composer studied theory with David Diamond and ear training with Renée Longy.

The experience of living in New York was vital.

Attending operas; hearing Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez; discovering the poetry of A.R. Ammons, and attending John Cage and Elliott Carter premieres all had a great impact.

He saw Pinter, Beckett and Albee plays on Broadway.

He frequently visited the city's art museums and galleries.

Both the work of the Abstract Expressionists and the burgeoning Minimalists were influential.

Frazelle's works have been commissioned and performed worldwide by some of today's most prominent artists and ensembles, such as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Odetta, Emanuel Ax, Jeffrey Kahane, Paula Robison, Cassandra Wilson, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

The music has been performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Westminster Abbey, the Concertgebouw and Wigmore Hall.

The composer's distinctive voice blends structural and tonal sophistication with a lyric clarity.

He has been influenced not only by his study with the great Modernist Roger Sessions, but also by the folksongs and landscape of his native North Carolina.

Critics have described the music as "sublime," "stunning," "atmospheric," "sweeping and powerful" and "spectacular."

During the composer's Juilliard years, he discovered the poetry of A. R. Ammons, which resulted in two song cycles, "Slightly Thinner Than Sight" (1976) and "Diversifications" (1978).

The setting of Ammons' poetry would become a lifelong pursuit.

To date he has set around forty of the poet's works.

Upon returning to Winston-Salem in 1978, the composer completed a large-scale piano work, “Fantasies for Piano,”, for NCSA piano instructor Clifton Matthews.

A year later, Frazelle approached the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, a vital arts institution in the region, about composing a site-specific work for the Center's Main Gallery.

SECCA's director, Ted Potter, encouraged the composer to create Seascapes (1981), an hour and a half work with the audience and performers seated in a giant chambered-nautilus-shaped spiral.

Again, the composer returned to poems of Ammons, creating a work for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra.

The poet contributed recorded readings of several of his works, which were interspersed among the sections of music.

This was Frazelle's first work exploring environmental and theatrical elements.

In 1983, another site-specific work was composed for SECCA.

Prisma was scored for three pianos and chamber orchestra, interacting with lighting design.

“Prisma” premiered in 1983.

Soon after, the pianist Jeffrey Kahane was looking for a composer of his generation to champion.

Kahane and Frazelle had known each other casually at Juilliard.