Gearhart, Livingston

Livingston Gearhart was born in Buffalo, New York December 31, 1916. His mother was Lillian Hawley Gearhart, a pianist who had studied for a year under Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. As a child Gearhart studied piano, oboe, violoncello, and sang in church choirs in Buffalo and New York City. He graduated from high school in East Orange, New Jersey in 1935. He entered Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1935 as an oboe student of Marcel Tabuteau. In his second year he switched his major to study composition with Rosario Scalero and piano with Nadia Reisenberg. Gearhart sailed to Paris aboard the Normandie in 1937. With generous support from a wealthy American expatriate, he was able to enroll at the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau where he studied music theory and composition with Nadia Boulanger. He was awarded the school's 2nd prize (no first prize was awarded that year) in the Prix Stovall composition competition in 1937. While in Paris he also met Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Robert Casadesus, pianist Isidore Philipp, and his future wife and duo-piano partner, Virginia Clotfelter. He and Virginia performed their debut in Paris February 1, 1939 at the Salle Chopin. They received good reviews and were then able to give concerts in other French and Swiss locations until the conditions of World War II caused them to return to the United States. Virginia Clotfelter adopted the professional name Morley and married Gearhart February 28, 1940 in New York City. They worked at numerous venues, including the Hotel Brevoort and the club, Ruban Bleu, both operated by Herbert Jacoby. The pair spent the summers of 1942 and 1943 as Artists-in-Residence at Morley's alma mater, Mills College in Oakland, California. While there Gearhart was able to study composition with Darius Milhaud. The Budapest String Quartet was also in residence at Mills College during those years and Gearhart and Morley formed friendships with quartet members Alexander and Mischa Schneider. The Morley Gearhart duo was very successful, performing works by Milhaud, Norman Dello Joio, David Diamond, and Stravinsky's Concerto per due pianoforte soli. The duo received contracts with Columbia Concerts and the Fred Waring Show that extended from 1943-1954. During 1941 to 1954, the two-piano team of Morley and Gearhart performed over 2000 concerts throughout the US and Canada in addition to recording for Columbia Masterworks and Decca Records. Included among the many concert dates was a performance by the duo at the White House for President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. During this period Gearhart also worked as a staff arranger for the Fred Waring Show. A two-CD retrospective released in 2001, Morley and Gearhart Rediscovered by Ivory Classics, features 22 of Gearhart's two-piano arrangements. Some of these arrangements survive at Penn State in their collection, Fred Waring's America. In many cases Gearhart never fully wrote out his part of a duo so no written arrangement survives. Livingston Gearhart's output contains several collections written for pedagogical purposes. The first of Gearhart's these works to be published was Clarinet Sessions in 1945. That was followed by similar collections for trumpet, violin, flute, and duos. Gearhart's entire compositional and arranging output includes 400-500 works (counting individual works within the collections). Gearhart returned to Buffalo in 1955 and was appointed to the faculty of the music department at the University of Buffalo. After a divorce from Virginia Morley, he married violinist and conductor Pamela Gerhart (not a misspelling) in 1955. He taught various courses in keyboard, theory, and orchestration until his retirement in 1985. Livingston Gearhart had four children: Paul, born to Virginia Morley Gearhart; Kim, Martha, and Fritz, born to Pamela Gearhart. Livingston Gearhart died in Buffalo at the age of 79 on July 14, 1996.

From the description of Livingston Gearhart Papers, 1933-1997. (SUNY at Buffalo). WorldCat record id: 712600528

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