Robert Paterson (born April 29, 1970) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist.
He is the son of Tony Paterson, an award-winning sculptor who was a Professor of Sculpture at the University at Buffalo, and Eleanor Paterson, a painter and bilingual education director at Erie Community College who received her Ph.D. in bilingual education from the University at Buffalo.
Although Paterson was surrounded by sculptors and painters while growing up,[3] his father enjoyed contemporary classical music and took him to new-music concerts at the University at Buffalo, where he heard works by Morton Feldman and John Cage, with both composers in attendance.
While a high school student, Paterson also attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute for two summers, where he studied percussion with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including Arthur Press, Charlie Smith, and Tom Gauger, and also performed in the BUTI Orchestra under Eiji Oue and guest conductor Leonard Bernstein.
In 2004, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Cornell University where he studied composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra.
While teaching, Paterson began working on a variety of commissions for ensembles such as Quintet of The Americas, The California EAR Unit and Volti.
He developed this technique while studying with John Beck at the Eastman School of Music, where he presented the world's first all six-mallet marimba recital.
[12] Paterson's music is influenced by nature (particularly the classical elements), and many of his works have ecological themes,[13] such as "A New Eaarth" and "Embracing The Wind".
Paterson's music is generally very colorful, and he incorporates extended techniques in many of his works, such as "Scorpion Tales" for two harps, "The Book of Goddesses" for flute, harp and percussion, "Komodo" and "Piranha" for solo marimba and "Eating Variations" for baritone and chamber ensemble.
I also like bell sounds, and often ask non-percussionists to play cup gongs (temple bowls or Tibetan bowls), finger cymbals and other hand-held percussion instruments",[18] such as "The Thin Ice of Your Fragile Mind", which calls for many of the performers to use graduated finger cymbals and Tingshas, "Eating Variations" which calls for specifically-pitched singing bowls, and "A New Eaarth," which calls for non-percussionists (such as one of the flute players) to use specifically-tuned wind chimes.
Many of Paterson's works are programmatic, such as "Electric Lines" for orchestra, "Crimson Earth" for symphonic band and "Sextet" for chamber ensemble.
Although he has set numerous poems by poets such as Wallace Stevens and Robert Creeley,[23] he has also set a myriad of diverse, alternative texts, such as fictitious answering machine messages ("Thursday" for soprano and piano), onomatopoeia words ("The Essence of Gravity" for a cappella choir), and even nursery rhymes ("Life is But a Dream" for a cappella choir).
Described by the press as "an amazingly colorful tone poem",[17] "A New Eaarth" consists of alternating sections of pure orchestral music, narration, and sections for orchestra and chorus (these excerpted choral movements also exist as a work for a choir and piano entitled "Suite from A New Eaarth").