JOHN TURNERComposer
John became resident composer with Hubbard/Geiss Music in Los Angeles in March 2008. John's recently completed the score for the 2008 feature film “You Belong to Me” (Wolfe Releasing, June 3, 2008). The score features strings by the powerhouse NYC string band Ethel. John's music, along with the music of Moby and other artists, was used for multi-media artist Romeo Alleaf's video installation Crybaby currently showing at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music).
John was the first young pianist chosen from his native Arkansas to attend Boston University's Tanglewood Center as a teenager. There, he studied with Maria Jaguaribe and participated in master classes held by the late Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. After completing a bachelor of arts degree in music, John received the Master of Music degree in 1996 while on a Graduate Fellowship from the University of Arkansas, studying with Robert Mueller and James Greeson. Upon relocating to New York, John participated in New York University's Composer & Sound Technology Workshop where he took part in master classes with composers John Corigliano and Richard Danielpour, among others. John's piece for chamber ensemble, Flashbacks From A Recurring Ice Dream, had its New York premiere in the summer of '96.
In July of 2007, John was named a finalist for the Sacatar Institute Artist Residency in Bahia, Brazil. John traveled to France in November 2005 for an artist residency at La Napoule Art Foundation in southern France. He was recently named a finalist for the Ned Rorem Award for Song for the piece “Up-Hill” and in January 2004 and John's piece for mixed chorus and orchestra, “Not All, Only A Few Return”, from the poem by the Pushcart Prize winning poet Agha Shahid Ali, was awarded a Jerome Foundation/American Composer's Forum/Vocal Essence reading in Minneapolis.
John's other film and theater scores include the 2002 independent feature Alma Mater (2002 Hamptons Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Audience Award), and the short films Slo-Mo (2002 Sundance, Telluride, HBO) and Passengers (Winner, Special Jury Prize, 2002 Deauville Film Festival, Deauville, France; 2002 Sundance Film Festival). John has played keyboard on Broadway for the hit show Jekyll & Hyde and composed and performed new music for the play Berlin, produced by Kerry Barden at the Tribeca Playhouse, New York City in 2001. John's work for television includes projects for The History Channel, Discovery Kids, and NBC. John is a member of ASCAP, the American Music Center, and the American Composer's Forum.
In 2002, John was invited to perform his piece Drive The Car for piano, spoken word, and multimedia at the Dimitar Dinev Cultural Center in Sofia, Bulgaria and was featured on Bulgarian Television's morning show and on Radio France Internationale (RFI). John received a grant from the Artbridge Foundation in 2001 to produce and curate the new composers series Sticks, Strings, Hammers, and Valves at Galapagos Artspace in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
John continues to be interested in new and unique uses of the voice in music. Whether by more traditional, melodic settings or by experimental techniques using spoken word and the manipulation of the voice by loops and audio filters, John's work looks to use melodic and rhythmic vocal elements in new ways. In working on the chorus and orchestra piece, Not All, Only A Few Return, John was introduced to the ghazal form. Through this originally Persian poetic form and its modern day popular counterpart in the music of India and Pakistan, John combined elements from western chorale style, Indian popular music, and the church modes into a choral piece that is part ghazal, part chorale, and part requiem. John is currently working on the piece Songs to Leave Under A Tree for Tenor & Piano for tenor Thomas Wazelle. The piece is based on poems by Native American poet Duane Niatum.