Paul Freeman Introduces James Mobberley

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, James Mobberley was raised in Pennsylvania. He earned his Master's Degree at the University of North Carolina and his Doctorate at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied composition with Donald Erb and Eugene O'Brien. He began teaching composition and electronic music in 1981, and since 1983 has been on the composition faculty of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 1991, he was named the Kansas City Symphony's first Composer-in-Residence. His Piano Concerto was composed for Richard Cass and the Kansas City Symphony and was premiered the same year with William McGlaughlin conducting. The Concerto for Marimba (eight hands) and Orchestra was written for Laurence Kaptain and Marimba Yajalon, an ensemble of four percussionists who perform on an authentic folk instrument indigenous to Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. The most unusual and characteristic quality of this instrument is the buzzing sound created by the kazoo-like membrane at the bottom of each resonator, creating a sound unlike that of any other mallet instrument. The composer writes about Arena : "Arena is the result of approximately two years of collaboration between choreographer Todd Bolender and me. Our discussions ranged from topics on spirituality to politics, from the poetry of T.S. Eliot to the paintings of Anselm Kieffer, from jazz to Stravinsky, and from George Balanchine to Martha Graham. Arena evolved slowly from our discussions into reality. The result is a work which suggests rather than describes, which evokes emotions rather than portrays actions, and which mixes despair and redemption in equal measure through the use of cyclical forms."