Bruce Maccombie’s music has been commissioned and performed by various organizations, including the Seattle Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the 20th Century Consort. Performances of these works have taken place at Carnegie Hall, the Seattle Opera House, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and other venues. His first piece for solo guitar, Nightshade Rounds, was first presented and published in New York City in 1979. He has served as Dean of the Juilliard School, Dean of the Boston University School for the Arts, and he currently lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he is Professor of Music and Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts.
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Bruce MacCombie has been Dean of the School for the Arts at Boston University since July 1992. This follows a six year tenure as Dean of the Juilliard School in New York. From 1980 to 1985, Mr. MacCombie served as Vice President and Director of Publica tions for G. Schirmer and Associated Music Publishers, Inc. Since 1984 he has served on the Board of Directors of the Charles Ives Society. He has been the recipient of various awards and grants which have included the Sutherland Dows Fellowship, a DAAD grant to the Freiburg Conservatory, a travel grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the Aeolian Chamber Players, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the 20th Century Consort, among others.
Born in 1943 in Providence, Rhode Island, Mr. MacCombie moved to Massachusetts at an early age and first studied composition with Philip Bezanson at the University of Massachusetts, where he earned a B.A. in 1967 and an M.M. in 1968. He holds a Ph.D. in music from the University of Iowa (1971) and has also studied with Wolfgang Fortner at the Freiburg Conservatory. In 1986 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the University of Massachusetts. In 1975, after four years in Europe, Mr. MacCombie was appointed to the Music Theory faculty at Yale University and one year later was appointed to the Composition faculty at the Yale School of Music. While at Yale he coordinated an annual series of six concerts of new music and taught various seminars relating to 20th Century music literature. In 1979, Mr. MacCombie was awarded one of the first Goddard Lieberson Fellowships by the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters. The award noted that “Mr. MacCombie composes polished gems of musical understatement. Characterized by a fresh and p enetrating wit, they sparkle and yet are clothed in mystery”. During the 1979-80 season, various works were presented by Composers Forum in New York, where Bernard Holland, writing in the New York Times, referred to them as having been composed by “a de ft and evocative craftsman”. Recent performances of Mr. MacCombie's works have included Greeting, in honor of Krzysztof Penderecki's sixtieth birthday, a new version of Nightshade Rounds, for guitar and string orchestra, commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic for soloist Sharon Isbin and conductor Lukas Foss, Color and Time, four choral pieces premiered in London in March 1990 at the Royal Academy, and Leaden Echo, Golden Echo for soprano and orchestra, premiered in October 1989 by the 20th Century C onsort and the Seattle Symphony with conductor Christopher Kendall and soprano Madeline Rivera. Joseph McLellan, writing in the Washington Post on October 24, 1989 commented that “The music is intense, thoughtful, subtly expressive and vividly colored. It is commonplace for composers to speak of putting their music at the service of words, but one seldom sees that ideal implemented so completely”. In October 1991 Chelsea Tango, a fanfare and tango for orchestra commissioned by the Seattle Symphony, was premiered in Seattle. Writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer R.M. Campbell noted “Among its attractive attributes is piquant charm done up in a light breezy attitude. Rhythms have a delicious sexiness and the melodies sensual allure...it posesses a distinct American flavor...”. The first European performance of this piece took place at the Warsaw Autumn Festival on September 25, 1992. Leaden Echo, Golden Echo was performed in Ekaterinburg, Russia on January 17, 1993 with soprano Sarah Reese and Sarah Caldwell conducting, and then on March 21, 1993 at Carnegie Hall in New York, again with soprano Sarah Reese, with the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Paul Dunkel.
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