Another High Note Struck in Career of Altadena Composer

A wall in William Kraft’s sprawling hilltop home is devoted to images of the contemporary composer at work: writing, conducting and playing music.

There are signed photographs of Igor Stravinsky and Zubin Mehta. There are concert posters showing the world-class symphony orchestras that have performed his work.

His favorite, a small beige and muted purple poster that hangs above a desk in his studio, is an advertisement for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. In profile are three composers whose works the company was to perform: Gustav Mahler, Charles Ives and Kraft himself.

“Not bad,” Kraft said, eyeing the poster that puts him side-by-side with two of the greatest 19th- and 20th-Century composers.

“Someone once looked at this poster and said to me: ‘That’s impressive company you keep,’ ” Kraft recalled. “I just looked at them and said: ‘They’re in pretty good company too.’ ”

Now the 67-year-old composer is up for yet another accolade. He was chosen in late August as a finalist for one of music’s most prestigious honors, the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards for New American Music.

Works by Kraft and three other composers will be performed Oct. 28 in Washington. His entry, the often-thunderous “Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra,” was nominated by Paul Polivnick, music director for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

“There is no one that I know of who is composing music in America today that I have greater respect for,” Polivnick said from his Birmingham home. “His work is dramatic, emotional, intellectually interesting and satisfying on so many levels. This orchestra is a great champion of his music.”

In fact, the Alabama orchestra has recorded two Kraft concertos, one for piano and the other for timpani, and an orchestral piece called “Interplay.” And it will record “Veils and Variations” next fall.

Kraft has written about 100 compositions, including “Concerto for Four Percussion Soloists and Orchestra,” first conducted by Mehta and now the most often-played Kraft work.

He was a percussionist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 25 years, and later a composer-in-residence and assistant conductor there. He also founded the philharmonic’s New Music Group, and today teaches at various California colleges.

Not bad for a guy who never dreamed he’d write music. “It never occurred to me that I could touch that world,” said Kraft as he sat in his living room, practically swallowed up by an overstuffed white sofa.

Born in Chicago, his parents were Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century. Kraft’s family moved to San Diego when he was 11.

His father, who alternately worked in the grocery, meat-packing and restaurant businesses, made sure all of his children had music lessons. Kraft studied piano between the ages of 5 and 10 with “terrible teachers.” But when his father’s grocery store burned down in the early 1930s, during the Depression, Kraft had to give up his lessons.

Several years later, he began his lessons again, but once more he “hated” his teachers and quit.

But at 15, Kraft tuned in on a Los Angeles radio station where he heard the big band sounds of Benny Goodman and Count Basie’s Orchestra, and decided to become a jazz musician.

“I would go to all the nightclubs to hear the big bands play,” Kraft said. “I’d go early because I was so short I wanted to get a seat up front so no one would block my view.”

It was during those years that Kraft began to play the drums. “I realized I’d have a better career playing the drums than the piano,” he said.

Although his father bought him a set of drums and built an addition to the house so the teen-ager could practice, Kraft knew he would have to leave home if he really wanted to be a musician. “San Diego was a cultural desert,” Kraft said.

At 18 he enrolled at UCLA, took private lessons and worked with a trio at the Blue Moon Cafe in Inglewood. In April, 1943, Kraft was drafted into the Army Air Forces, joined the service band and there met acclaimed pianist Saul Davis. “That’s when my life really took a turn,” Kraft said. “He began my education.”

Davis taught Kraft an appreciation for such composers as Bach, Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin. “I had only heard Beethoven and Mozart played badly in San Diego,” he said. “Classical music didn’t interest me.”

When he was 25, Kraft took his first lesson in composition. He had moved to New York to attend Columbia University and take private lessons from a Juilliard School professor. After graduating from Columbia, Kraft took a job as a percussionist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, stayed for one season--and quit.

“We practiced 10 hours a day and then played concerts. There was no time for composing,” said Kraft, twice divorced and the father of three. “I was so discouraged I considered getting a real estate license and getting out of music altogether.”

Instead, Kraft has watched his career steadily grow. Program notes have chronicled his ascent. “First it said, ‘composed by William Kraft,’ ” he said with a slight smile that lifted his dark, bushy eyebrows above thick glasses. “Then it said, ‘the well-known composer William Kraft,’ and then, ‘the internationally played William Kraft.’ Now sometimes it says, ‘the distinguished William Kraft.’ ”

“You know you’re getting good,” the composer explained, “when they give you adjectives.”