Del Sol Featured Composer-
Richard Felciano

Richard Felciano’s
interest in acoustics and architecture is central to a number of his works, including not only vocal, chamber, and orchestral works, but musical environments for Boston City Hall and Berlin’s Tempelhof Airfield (Berliner Feuerwerksmusik, commissioned by the City of Berlin for its 750th anniversary). His work has also received awards from the French, Italian, and American governments and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. A Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, he team-teaches in architecture, and co-authored Space Calculated in Seconds (Princeton U. Press) describing the 1958 Phillips Pavilion in Brussels, the pioneering music-architecture collaboration by Le Corbusier, Varèse, and Xenakis which created the famous Poème électronique. His An American Decameron, an hour-long song cycle on Studs Terkel’s interviews, was commissioned by the Library of Congress.

Regarding string quartets: "Brahms waited until he was 50 to write the first of his four symphonies, apparently feeling that his musical maturity was, only then, up to the task. Similarly, years of sitting through violin lessons of my young son, taking notes, at the insistence of his immigrant Russian teacher, gave me insight into the unique possibilities of strings and a profound respect for the skill of those who master them." R.F.