Jerré Tanner is an American composer of symphonic and operatic music. He studied orchestration with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Wayne Peterson at San Francisco State University where Tanner earned an MA degree in composition. He has received numerous awards and grants from such diverse sources as ASCAP, the (Hawaii) State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the Celia S. Buck Award administered by the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of American Composers and Conductors, the National and Hawaii Bicentennial Commissions, the Huntington Hartford Foundation in Los Angeles, Meet-the-Composer, and two Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance grants administered by the American Music Center. He is the first American composer of his generation to be recorded digitally. In 1997 the State of Hawaii awarded him its highest honor, the Artist Fellowship in Music Composition. He received two grants from the Hawaii Community Foundations to create settings of Monarchy period songs for solo voice and for men’s, women’s and mixed choruses. In 1998 tenor Keith Ikaia Purdy gave the premiere of the solo/piano settings in Wiesbaden, Germany and later performed orchestral settings with l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
In 1999 he was one of 68 American composers chosen in a national competition to be commissioned in the “Continental Harmony” Millennium project administered by the American Composers Forum in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the White House Millennium Council. His Millennium commission and residency was for the State of New Mexico where he created Symphony No. 2 Keepers of the Land, a dramatic choral symphony for the Spencer Theater in Alto. For the second round of Continental Harmony commissions he was chosen to compose the North Carolina project, a tribute to 19th century Admiral Charles Wilkes, a colorful American patriot whose chief contribution was leading the Exploring Expedition of 1838-42. High Seas to High Shoals, a set of twelve variations on a naval theme, was given its premiere in February 2003 by the Gaston County Symphonic Band in conjunction with exhibitions at the Schiele Museum of Natural History and the Gaston County Museum of Art and History.
Tanner's vocal, choral, orchestral, symphonic band and chamber compositions have been performed by the Honolulu Symphony, the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, the Wellesley Symphony, the Altoona and Nittany Valley (Pennsylvania) Symphonies, the Dubuque Symphony, the Hawaii Youth Symphony, the Uptown Opera (Spokane), the Cincinnati Boy Choir, the Spring Wind Quintet and numerous choruses and concert bands. The London Symphony Orchestra's recording of his heroic crossover work Boy with Goldfish is a virtuoso demonstration of his gift for orchestration. In 1990 he was one of sixteen composers selected in international competition to be recorded in Eastern Europe for Vienna Modern Masters’ “Music from Six Continents” 1991 series of CDs. His tone poem Aukele (The Swimmer) was recorded by the Polish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Vienna Modem Masters has since recorded his concert aria Fragrant Harbor (Hong Kong) and an orchestral Suite from his Hawaiian opera for youth The Singing Snails with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra released on their 1992 series of CDs. In 1997 the Moravian Philharmonic performed and recorded the Warrior’s Aria from Tanner’s Symphony No. 1 The Naupaka Floret. The Prague Chamber Orchestra recorded his chamber opera The Kona Coffee Cantata in 1994 for release on Albany Records.
In 1996 his Fanfare for a River City was chosen in competition for premiere by the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra in a concert celebrating Iowa’s 150th anniversary of Statehood and was subsequently performed at their summer Freedom Festival and by the Drake University Wind Ensemble.
His chief collaborator is lyric poet Harvey Hess with whom he has created four operas, concert arias and several song cycles. He is a retired member of the Hawaii Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association and has been a member of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus. His biography is listed in the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He is a composer member of the American Music Center, and the American Composers Forum and Iowa Composers Forum.