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| Nancy Van de Vate |
Nancy Van de Vate arrived in Oxford more than fifty years ago, in September 1955, as a young mother and wife of a University professor. Shortly thereafter she began work on a Master of Music degree in Composition, the first student to earn this degree at the University of Mississippi. Since then, Dr. Van de Vate has earned international acclaim as a composer who has written musical compositions for large orchestra as well as many operas, concertos, instrumental ensembles, choruses, and works for voice and solo instruments. Seven of her compositions have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. During her active career, she founded the International League of Women Composers and co-founded a recording company, Vienna Modern Masters, for which she remains president and artistic director.
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, she was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Wellesley College before earning the M.M. at UM and the D.M. in Music Composition at Florida State University. She taught at several colleges and universities in Memphis and Knoxville, Tennessee, before moving to Hawaii in 1975. Since then, she has lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, and moved permanently to Vienna, Austria, in 1985, where she was awarded Austrian citizenship for her contribution to the cultural life of that country in 1994.
In January 2005, her new chamber opera, "Where the Cross Is Made," based on the play by Eugene O'Neill, was selected by the National Opera Association (USA) as the winner of its international biennial competition for new chamber operas. A shortened version was introduced in New York City, with a full production following in January 2006 at the 51st annual convention of the National Opera Association in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Her 26 orchestral works include the well-known "Chernobyl," which has been performed in Vienna, Hamburg, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and in the United States at the Chautauqua Festival and by the Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestra. A special performance on February 25, 2006 by the Yale Symphony Orchestra, Toshiyuki Shimada, conductor, marked the 20th anniversary of the world's most famous nuclear accident. Chernobyl has been broadcast worldwide since its first appearance on compact disc in 1987.
The composer has also created a large body of solo and chamber music for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles. Among her newest chamber works are String Quartet No. 2, commissioned by the Vienna Mozart Year 2006, and Brass Quintet No. 2: Variations on the "Streets of Laredo," commissioned by the University of Mississippi for an October 2005 festival of her music. "Journeys Through the Life and Music of Nancy Van de Vate," a complete biography and extensive anaylsis of her music, written by UM music faculty members Laurdella Foulkes-Levy and Burt Levy, was published in 2004 by Scarecrow Press.
To hear samples of Dr. Nancy Van de Vate's compositions, click the following links (Real Player required):