Mekeel, Joyce

Joyce Mekeel. (b. New Haven, CT, 6 July 1931; d. Watertown (?) MA, 29 December 1997). American composer, harpsichordist, anthropologist, assistant professor. She studied at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA (1952-1955); with Nadia Boulanger at the Conservatoire National de Musique in Paris (1955-57); at Yale University, receiving a B. M. in 1959 and a M.M. in theory and composition in 1960; and at Boston University, receiving a Ph.D. in 1983. Her other teachers included Earl Kim (composition); Ralph Kirkpatrick and Gustav Leonhardt (harpsichord); and David Kraehenbuehl (theory). From 1960-1964 she taught piano and theory privately in Princeton; from 1967-1970 she taught at the New England Conservatory of Music; and from 1970-mid 1990's was assistant professor of composition and theory at Boston University where she was director of the Electronic Music Studio. She was awarded fellowships to the MacDowell Colony in 1963, 1964, and 1974 and to Yaddo in 1974. Her other awards included the Ingram-Merrill grant in composition in 1964; the Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Music Award in 1965; the Radcliffe Institute grant from 1968-1970; a research grant in anthropology in 1971 from Boston University; and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1975. Her commissions included those from the Boston Musica Viva, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Fromm Foundation of Harvard University. Her works are known for treating conventional voices and instruments in unconventional ways, such as requiring instrumentalists to walk, whisper, or sing, or singers to shriek, declaim or gesticulate. The vocal pieces often employ multilingual texts.

From the guide to the Collection of musical scores, 1961-1996., (Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, Harvard College Library)

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