Life After the Pulitzer : Composer Bolcom Back at Work

The day after he took a Pulitzer Prize in music--for his 12 New Etudes for Piano--William Bolcom was back at work, composing.

“I’m writing a Broadway opera, to be called ‘Casino Paradi” Bolcom said on the phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., where he has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Music since 1973.

“It will first be performed at the American Theatre Festival in Philadelphia in October. But first, we’re going to do a workshop on it this month, but no cast has been selected.

Asked to define what he means by a “Broadway opera,” the 49-year-old American musician--whose other fame has come from the recitals he has given as a pianist with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris--answered, “Well, not a musical, and not an opera. Something like what Sondheim writes.”

“Casino Paradise” will be Bolcom’s first large-scale stage work. Early in his career, he wrote two cabaret-operas, “Dynamite Tonite” (1963) and “Greatshot” (1966), with his collaborator Arnold Weinstein. Although he has written symphonies, concertos and extended orchestral pieces, Bolcom’s largest--some critics say most important--work to date may be “Songs of Innocence and Experience” (1984), a musical setting of William Blake’s 46 poems of that title.

The first nine of the 12 prize-winning New Etudes for Piano were written originally for the late Paul Jacobs, Bolcom said, “but they belong now to Marc-Andre Hamelin (for whom Bolcom wrote the last three), who has played them in several places--most notably at (New York’s) Town Hall, last October--and has recorded them.”

Isn’t a set of etudes for piano a departure for Bolcom, who is best known for his vocal music?

“A departure? Not really. Everything I write is a departure. I go from thing to thing,” Bolcom said.

Bolcom, a native of Seattle who studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, said he is taking the Pulitzer in stride, and that it is not necessarily a consolation in this year he turns 50.

“I’m shameless about that birthday (May 26)--I’m just so surprised and grateful to still be alive. I greet every day with gratitude.”

Of course, he has written a lot of music--the quantity is something to be proud of, no?

“Well, I’ve written a fair amount. But I always think of my teacher Milhaud, who once told me, ‘Now, I’m in my 60s, and I’ve written about 400 compositions. But then I consider Mozart, who died at 35, and wrote more than 600. I must be lazy.’ ”

Bolcom laughs. “Perhaps I’m lazy, too.”