Jeanne E. Shaffer - Remember

Jeanne Shaffer (1925-2007) was a prolific composer of music in many forms and media. Jeanne Shaffer (1925-2007) was a prolific composer of music in many forms and media.

Boats and Candles

5. Remember

Ludmila Vernerová, soprano and the Moyzes Quartet

From the CD: Desertscapes: A Portrait of American Women Composers

A child star, Jeanne Shaffer sang on tour with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra and played Jeannette MacDonald as a child in the film, Girl of the Golden West. As an adult she earned a Ph.D. from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, continued singing, conducted major choral works, directed many musicals, served as department head at Judson and Huntingdon Colleges, and was a church organist and choirmaster in Montgomery, Alabama. Following her teaching career, she hosted a weekly radio program on women composers called Eine kleine Frauenmusik that was broadcast over Southeastern Public Radio.
In 1987 her opera, The Ghost of Susan B. Anthony, was commissioned by the University of Alabama. In 1989 she was an associate composer at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Joan Tower and in 1991 with Lucas Foss. Over the years she was awarded grants from NEH, the Aspen Music Festival and the Alabama Arts Council. In 2003 she received an honorary doctorate from Huntingdon College. Arsis Press (under the name of Sisra Publications for ASCAP composers) has published her Three Faces of Woman for clarinet and piano and four song cycles: Christina Rossetti--My Mother and Me and Eternity--Five Songs to poems of William Blake, Emptiness Became Music. and On Gardens, Minutes and Butterflies with poetry by the composer. Other music is available through Plymouth, Lawson-Gould, MMB Music, and Concordia publishers.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• song
• cycle
• american
• female
• composer
• soprano
• chamber
• orchestra