About the Composer
Internationally recognized Composer Carol Worthey's heartfelt, dramatically potent music engages the listener with its accessible but fresh approach to contemporary music. Performers enjoy playing her well-crafted works because they note that each performer gets a chance to shine during the piece. She has been dubbed "the Dream Composer" because of her ability to compose while asleep then wake to write the music down.
Carol began her music career on the first day of life: Family friend Leonard Bernstein was in her house, made hamburgers in the shape of stars and declared, "This little girl's gonna be a star!"
Not to make Lenny wrong, Carol began composing at age three and a half. When Carol was ten she wrote an Etude that was premiered in Carnegie Hall by pianist Vivian Rivkin. At thirteen Carol began her first composition lessons with Grant Beglarian (himself a student of Aaron Copland at Tanglewood) at Merrywood School of Music where John Harbison was Music Director. She studied with Darius Milhaud at Aspen Music Festival, and with Vincent Persichetti (of Juilliard) at the Hopkins Center for the Performing Arts (Dartmouth) where she was also mentored by Walter Piston and Elliott Carter. (At the time she was known as Carol Lee Symonds.)
Carol Worthey won First Prize in Composition while at Columbia University (studying under Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Henry Cowell) and was the winner in 1990 of Inner City Cultural Center's four-round Composer Competition for her Fanfare for Joy & Wedding March. Carol studied with Dick Grove and was the second woman graduate of the extremely demanding Contemporary Composing and Arranging Program at the Grove School of Music where she honed her skills in orchestration. After Grove School, she also studied under Academy Award winner Eddy Lawrence Manson.
She has since had eight world premieres at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, as well as works performed in England, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, China (Beijing and Hong Kong), Mexico, Canada and throughout the United States. A children's musical she wrote played for five years with the Los Angeles Children's Theatre and was featured on Entertainment Tonight. She has scored the music for an HBO film "The Special Visitor" produced by George Lucas.
A visual artist as well as composer, Carol painted and composed music in 2001 for Angel of Music, an interactive statue which was displayed at the Los Angeles Music Center and was part of a citywide exhibit. Angel of Music was seen by over 600,000 visitors and voted the "Most Popular Statue" in the exhibit.
In 1992 Carol was nominated for a Legacy Award by the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. A student of Bernstein protege Brad Keimach, Carol made her debut as conductor in Paris at a 2001 concert held in honor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 2002 Carol was commissioned by cellist Joyce Geeting (protege of cello great Janos Starker) to compose Elegy for Cello & Orchestra, a one-movement concerto World-premiered at St. Martin-in-The-Fields, London in Spring of 2003. Elegy is a musical enactment of the events of 9/11 and is a heartfelt tribute to those lost and those left behind. It is designed to heal. It has since been performed in Germany and throughout the United States by three cello-piano duos and has garnered critical raves.
In 2007 Ms Worthey exhibited her paintings at the Florence Biennale International Contemporary Art Exhibit and created (in a dream) "Fanfare for The New Renaissance" for ten brass, a work which won a Special Recognition Award from the Biennale and the City of Florence after it was world-premiered on Opening Day of the Biennale. The fanfare has since been performed by brass members of the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Israeli Philharmonic at Italian Brass Week during the Santa Fiora Music Festival in 2009. That same year the Fanfare received its American Premiere by the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra and its Alaska Premiere at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
Carol participated in the 2008 Beijing International Congress of Women in Music where her "Jade Flute" for Chinese instruments and Western chamber group was world-premiered. She gave an "East Meets West" seminar on how to orchestrate effectively using eastern and western instruments at the China Conservatory of Music while there. In 2010 her "Romanza" received its China Premiere in Hong Kong.
During the first half of 2010 Carol Worthey's international career went into hypermode when she received fourteen world premieres by many famous performers, two premieres in New York City, one in Hong Kong, one each in Philadelphia, Upper State New York, University of Southern California and many premieres throughout Greater Los Angeles. During the first three months of 2010 a podcast interview/concert devoted to Carol Worthey on Classical Music Discoveries was downloaded by over ten million listeners worldwide.
Certainly this unprecedented surge of popularity is a dream come true for this "Dream Composer"!
To hear her many vocal, choral, chamber and orchestral works, please visit her website
http://www.carolworthey.com
There you may also see her gallery of paintings, read her music tips, art tips, poetry and other writings.
She can be reached at carol@carolworthey.com
Carol is proud to say she has been happily married to Ray Korns for thirty years, has one lovely daughter Megan Worthey and lives in Hollywood Hills where she teaches composition and piano.