JEFFERY COTTON joined the Boston-based Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra in 1999 as their second composer-in-residence. His first new work for Metamorphosen, Lyra, was praised by the Boston Globe as "a gentle, confessional hymn to music of great beauty." Cotton also served as the first composer-in-residence of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble in New York City from 1992 through 1996, during which time he create Second Helpings, a "hosted" series of contemporary chamber music performances in the galleries of the Guggenheim Museum SoHo. The series, hailed by the New York Times as "something truly different", continues to this day.
A native of Los Angeles, Cotton began his musical studies at California State University at Northridge, where he studied clarinet with Charles Bay and composition with Frank Campo, Daniel Kessner, and Aurelio de la Vega. In 1983 Cotton received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct a two-year course of study with Hans Werner Henze at the Academy of Music in Cologne, Germany. During this time Cotton traveled extensively with Henze, attending among other events the Santa Fe Opera and the Edinburgh Festival, where Henze conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the premiere of Cotton’s Abendland. Returning the United States in 1985, Cotton then studied with George Crumb, Richard Wernick and Jay Reise at the University of Pennsylvania as an Annenberg Fellow, receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. in 1989.
In 1990 Jeffery Cotton returned to Germany as a Guggenheim Fellow, and lived in Berlin during the German Reunification. During this time he began composing his ballet Pyramus and Thisbe (a work which was premiered some twelve years later in an orchestral suite version, April 2002). In 1991 he returned to the United States, settled in New York and began his long and productive relationship with St. Luke's. He composed the Quartet for Low Strings, Trio, Five Runic Songs and Lydian Sonata for the ensemble.
In 1995 a Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest consortium comprised of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra commissioned Jeffery Cotton to compose CityMusic for narrator and orchestra, a theater piece for young audiences. The Cleveland Plain Dealer describes the work as "an affectionate and humorous urban tone painting." The work was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in October 1995, and has subsequently been performed over a dozen times by the Cleveland Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphony.
It was in March of 1999 that Metamorphosen and soloist Alexis Pia Gerlach, under music director Scott Yoo, offered the world premiere of Cotton's Serenade (1993) for cello and chamber orchestra, prior to naming him composer-in-residence. The Boston Globe says the Serenade is "all at once luscious and logical, elegantly orchestrated with some super fire-and-ice wind chording. It considerately provided occasions to show what a capable cello soloist -
in this case Alexis Pia Gerlach - could do." And the Boston Herald wrote about the Serenade, "You're never sure where it's going to go next, but when it gets there you think to yourself, 'Of course.' "
Having witnessed first-hand the attacks upon and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center towers from his home in Jersey City, Jeffery Cotton composed his Elegy for string orchestra in just six days. It was premiered by Metamorphosen in Troy, New York, on September 28, 2001.
Jeffery Cotton has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including most recently the 2002 Aaron Copland Award, a commission from the Cypress String Quartet, a grant from the Fromm Foundation, and the 2003 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship to work at the Liguria Study Center in Genoa, Italy. He was also a featured composer during the Tage für Neue Musik Darmstadt in March 2003.
Recent performances of Mr. Cotton's music include his Sextet for Strings, performed three times by Concertante (including the New York City premiere), and the Elegy, performed by the New Jersey Symphony for the anniversary of the September 11th attacks.