- He was frank about his personal life and his demons - alcoholism, for one.
- Del Tredici was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer who began as an experimentalist . He became best known for a midcareer shift toward a style that came to be called the New Romanticism, which yielded a series of rich-hued, tuneful pieces based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice" stories.
- He started his musical life as an aspiring pianist at the age of twelve, and said that if he had not been a pianist, he would have become a florist.
- He was described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of our most flamboyant outsider composers".
- David Del Tredici was a Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow.
- After studying at the University of California, Berkeley, he attended Princeton University. There he studied composition with Roger Sessions, Earl Kim, and Seymour Shifrin.
- Del Tredici was Composer-In-Residence at the New York Philharmonic from 1988 until 1990.
- At Princeton he was initially influenced by serialism, but abandoned that school of composition within a year of starting it. He left Princeton to live in New York City for two years before returning to the university.
- In 1999 and 2000 he taught at Yale University.
- Del Tredici taught at Harvard University, where he worked alongside Leon Kirchner, and was a part of the modernism movement. He stated that "anything bad appeals to any young composer", including himself.
- He also found inspiration in Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice and its commentary on the works of Lewis Carroll. During this period, he found himself moving back towards tonality, which he felt was more appropriate for works such as his Final Alice and Adventures Underground.
- He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied piano and played primarily Romantic works.
- Del Tredici composed work for Michael Tilson Thomas and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
- He also taught at Boston University, Juilliard School, and the University of Buffalo.
- He composed Opus 1, his first composition, and was invited to perform it for Darius Milhaud. After Milhaud complimented him on the piece, Del Tredici went back to Berkeley to concentrate on composition rather than performance.
- In 1988, his work Tattoo, commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, was debuted by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.
- At Berkeley, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School. The pianist he was going to study with was "mean" to him, however, so Del Tredici tried his hand at composing music instead.
- Much of Del Tredici's work was inspired by literature, including author and poet James Joyce. As a fellow lapsed Catholic, Del Tredici was attracted to Joyce's struggles with his own Catholic past and "tortured life", which found voice in Del Tredici's "dissonant and nearly atonal" style.
- He also created works celebrating "gayness", acknowledging that many great composers were gay and that "it's something to be celebrated". A reviewer noted that themes in his work examine "tormented relationships, personal transformations, and the joys and sorrows of gay life".
- In 1964, Del Tredici met Aaron Copland at Tanglewood; they would be friends for the remainder of Copland's life, and his musical style remains an influence on Del Tredici.
- During his early development as a composer, he found influence in his piano teachers Bernhard Abramovitch and Robert Helps, whom he found more creative and supportive of trusting "your instincts" than had been his composition professors.
- He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and held additional residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.
- Del Tredici also composed works influenced by rock and folk music.
- Composer Aaron Copland said about him:" "I know of no other composer...who composes music of greater freshness and daring.".
- David Del Tredici's works have been recorded on more than a dozen labels. These include Volume 1 of the Complete Piano Works performed by Marc Peloquin (Naxos), Facts of Life Del Tredici's monster guitar work for David Leisner (Azica), A Field Manual and Magyar Madness (E-1 and Naxos), and an all-Del Tredici CD on Deutsche Grammophon performed by Oliver Knussen and the Netherlands' ASKO Ensemble. Forthcoming recordings will include:Bullycide, Grand Trio, String Quartet No. 1, Felix Variations (played by his nephew, virtuoso trombonist Felix Del Tredici) and Dynamic Duo for Felix and Marc Peskanov (Albany), Complete Piano Works vol. 2 ), and the first recording of the complete Child Alice with Courtenay Budd soprano, Gil Rose, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP).
- David Del Tredici also composed an opera and song cycles.
- His In Memory of a Summer Day (part one of Child Alice) won Del Tredici a Pulitzer Prize. That piece would be developed into a ballet, which has been performed by the National Ballet of Canada and the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
- He wrote music using the work of, or as tribute to, Chana Bloch, Colette Inez, Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Paul Monette, and Alfred Corn.
- Del Tredici's piano sextet, Bullycide, inspired by teen suicides due to bullying, was premiered in 2013.
- With the appearance in 1976 of Final Alice, David Del Tredici's hour-long setting of Lewis Carroll for high soprano and large orchestra, a new movement in music, Neo-Romanticism, was born.
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