Michael Daugherty

Daugherty brothers: (L-to-R) Tom, Pat, Michael, Tim, and Matt, 1973

Michael Daugherty was born into a musical family on April 28, 1954, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His father Willis Daugherty (1929–2011) was a jazz and country and western drummer, his mother Evelyn Daugherty (1927–1974) was an amateur singer,[5] and his grandmother Josephine Daugherty (1907–1991) was a pianist for silent film.[6] Daugherty's four younger brothers are all professional musicians: Pat Daugherty (b. 1956) Leader of the group New York Electric Piano, Tim Daugherty (b. 1958) jazz/pop composer of over 15 CD's featuring original compositions, Matt Daugherty (b. 1960) teacher of Music education in Florida, and Tommy D. Daugherty (b. 1961) engineer and producer for many of the Death Row artists most specifically Tupac Shukar.[5]

The centerpieces of the modest Daugherty home, located at 1547 5th Avenue S.E. in Cedar Rapids, were a player piano, television, and record player. At the age of 8, Daugherty taught himself how to play piano by pumping the pedals of the player piano and watching how piano keys moved to Tin Pan Alley tunes such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band".[5] Music was a significant activity in the Daugherty family, especially during the holidays when relatives would participate in jam sessions of popular songs like "Misty" and "Sentimental Journey". Additionally, the Daugherty family would frequently gather around the television in the evening to watch popular variety hours such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.[7] The record collection at the Daugherty home consisted mainly of 'easy listening music' of the fifties and music from Broadway theatre.

During his developmental years, Daugherty's mother encouraged him to paint, draw cartoons, tap dance, and play basketball and his father and uncle Danny Nicol taught him how to play rock and jazz drums. From 1963-67 Daugherty played bass drum in the Emerald Knights and tom-toms in the Grenadier Drum and Bugle Corps where he competed against other Drum and Bugle Corps throughout small Midwestern towns. During these years, Daugherty was employed as an early morning paper boy for The Des Moines Register and delivered papers across his neighborhood and to Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids.[5]

Traveling was an important pastime for the Daugherty family. They often took long summer road trips down two-lane highways to tourist locations, including Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls and Miami Beach.[6] In 1964, the entire Daugherty family took a two-week vacation to London where The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix were at the height of their fame and Carnaby Street was the cutting edge of pop culture and fashion – this was in the heart of the Swinging Sixties.[8]

The sixties in America were a time of great political unrest and social change. This made a great impact on the teenage Daugherty.[9] Civil Rights demonstrations for racial equality and integration and demonstrations against the Vietnam War were becoming common day occurrences in Iowa by 1970, especially at the nearby University of Iowa, in Iowa City.[10]

From 1968–72, Daugherty was the leader, arranger, and organist for his high school rock, soul, and funk band, The Soul Company.[5] This band performed a variety of Motown charts and music by James Brown, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Sly and the Family Stone. Because accessing sheet music was almost impossible, Daugherty learned to hand-transcribe the music by listening to vinyl recordings. With the help of his father, who drove the band across the state, The Soul Company became a locally popular group that performed at high school proms, dances, and other events.[8]

During the same years, Daugherty was a piano accompanist for the Washington High School Concert Choir, a solo jazz piano performer in nightclubs and lounges, and he appeared on local television as the pianist for the country and western Dale Thomas Show.[5] Daugherty interviewed jazz artists who performed in Iowa, including Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, George Shearing, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and he wrote articles on their music for the high school newspaper. During the summers of 1972–77, Daugherty played Hammond organ at county fairs across the Midwest for various popular music stars such as Bobby Vinton, Boots Randolph, Pee Wee King, and members of The Lawrence Welk Show.[5]

Daugherty studied music composition and jazz at the University of North Texas College of Music from 1972 to 1976. His teachers of composition included Martin Mailman and James Sellars. Daugherty also played jazz piano in the Two O'Clock Lab Band.[5] It was after hearing the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber that Daugherty decided to devote his full energies into composing music for the concert stage.[6] In 1974, conductor Anshel Brusilow programmed a new work with the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra, Daugherty was 20 years of age. After his premiere of Movements for Orchestra, the composition faculty awarded Daugherty a fellowship, which allowed him to continue his musical studies at the university. Daugherty received a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from North Texas State University in 1976.[5]

That same year, Daugherty moved to New York City to experience the exploding new music scene. While there, he studied serialism with Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music for two years, and received a Master of Music in Composition degree in 1978.[5] To earn money for his studies, Daugherty was employed as an usher at Carnegie Hall and a rehearsal pianist for dance classes directed by the New York City Ballet dancer Jacques d'Amboise.[11]

Daughterty at IRCAM, 1979

Daugherty frequently attended "uptown" and "downtown" new music concerts in New York City; this is where he became acquainted with composers such as Milton Babbitt, Morton Feldman, and Pierre Boulez.[5] In 1978, Boulez, then the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, invited Daugherty to apply to his recently opened computer music institute in Paris: IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique). A Fulbright Fellowship enabled Daugherty to move to Paris to study computer music at IRCAM from 1979 to 1980. During his time at IRCAM, he met many composers such as Luciano Berio, Gérard Grisey, Tod Machover, and Frank Zappa.[5] In Paris, Daugherty had the opportunity to hear contemporary music by the leading European composers of the time performed by the Ensemble l'Itinéraire and Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain. He also attended analysis classes given by Betsy Jolas at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.[5]

In the fall of 1980, Daugherty returned to America to pursue doctoral studies in composition at the Yale School of Music. During that time, Jacob Druckman (who was one of America's most influential composers) was chair of the composition department at Yale and composer in residence with the New York Philharmonic. Daugherty studied with Druckman and other Pulitzer Prize winning composers at Yale, including Bernard Rands and Roger Reynolds. He also studied improvisational notation systems and open form with experimental music composer Earle Brown.[5] Daugherty's composition class at Yale included student composers who would later become unique and important voices in contemporary music: Bang on a Can composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe; along with Robert Beaser, Aaron Jay Kernis, Scott Lindroth, and Betty Olivero.[12]

At Yale, Daugherty wrote his dissertation on the relationship between the music of Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler and the writings of Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson.[5] He worked closely on this dissertation with John Kirkpatrick, who was the curator of the Ives Collection at Yale and gave the 1938 premiere of Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord Sonata. Daugherty also continued his interest in jazz where he worked with Willie Ruff and directed the Yale Jazz Ensemble. It was Ruff who introduced Daugherty to jazz arranger Gil Evans, who, at that time, was looking for an assistant. For the next several years, Daugherty traveled by train from New Haven to Evans' private studio in Manhattan. Daugherty helped Evans organize his music manuscripts and complete projects. The most notable project was the reconstruction of the lost arrangements of Porgy and Bess, which was originally used for the 1958 recording with Miles Davis.[5]

During the summer of 1981, Daugherty studied composition with Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Mario Davidovsky as a composition fellow at Tanglewood, which, at that time, was renowned as a bastion of abstract and atonal music. It was at Tanglewood that Daugherty met the composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. After hearing Daugherty's music at Tanglewood, Bernstein encouraged Daugherty to seriously consider integrating American popular music with concert music.[9] In the early 1980s, Bernstein's populist attitude was rarely shared by critics who favored "serious" contemporary concert music.[13]

One year later, in the summer of 1982, Daugherty traveled to Germany to attend the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik – Darmstadt International Summer Courses in New Music).[5] Darmstadt was one of the leading centers for new music in Europe, where the musical aesthetics of Theodor W. Adorno were still of great influence. Daugherty attended lectures given by composers, including Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and performances by the Arditti String Quartet. At Darmstadt, Daugherty became friends with Karlheinz's son, the trumpet player Markus Stockhausen. Together they formed an experimental improvisation ensemble (Markus Stockhausen on trumpet and electronics and Daugherty on synthesizers) that, over several years, performed in concert halls and clubs across Europe.[5]

From left to right: György Ligeti, Lukas Ligeti, Vera Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, and Michael Daugherty at the ISCM World Music Days in Graz, Austria, 1982

In the fall of 1982, Daugherty was invited by composer György Ligeti to study composition with him at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. In addition to attending Ligeti's composition seminar (which took place at his apartment in Hamburg), Daugherty traveled with Ligeti to attend concerts and festivals of his music throughout Europe.[5] At the time, Ligeti was interested in the music of Conlon Nancarrow, who lived in isolation in Mexico City and composed complex polyrhythmic music for player pianos. The player piano (by now an antique) was a familiar and nostalgic musical instrument to Daugherty. Daugherty met Nancarrow in Graz, Austria, when Ligeti introduced Nancarrow and his music to the European intelligentsia at the 1982 ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) World Music Days.[14] During the following two years (1983–84), Daugherty continued to study with Ligeti while employed as a solo jazz pianist in night clubs in Cambridge, England and Amsterdam. To create "original" music, Ligeti encouraged and inspired Daugherty to find new ways to integrate computer music, jazz, rock, and American popular music with concert music.[5] In the fall of 1984, Daugherty returned to America and devoted his career to doing just that.