Carman Moore
composer and conductor


The New York Times, in a glowing review of his Magical Circles, called Carman Moore “a composer who not only defies categories, but treats them with disdain.” The reviewer continued, “Mr. Moore has a lot of music in his head, the product of his upbringing in black culture, his classical training and his voracious curiosity, and in his multi-media extravaganzas he finds some distinctly odd and wonderful places for it.” A Village Voice critic, reviewing another concert of Moore's music, wished that “all new music were so professional, so tightly-written, so patently made to gratify the ear rather than theories, mandates, and pretensions...”

Born in Lorain, Ohio Carman Moore earned his Bachelor of Music Degree at Ohio State Univ. before moving to New York City, where he studied composition privately with Hall Overton and at the Juilliard School with Luciano Berio and Vincent Persichetti where he earned his Masters Degree with distinction. He began composing for symphony and chamber ensembles while writing lyrics for pop songs, gradually adding opera, theatre, dance and film scores to his body of work. His work in popular music included lyrics and arrangements for ex-Rascals leader Felix Cavaliere, both on his first solo album FELIX CAVALIERE, his second DESTINY, and on the Foghat single "Rock'n'Roll Outlaws." Among his early commissioned symphonic works were Wildfires and Field Songs for the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Boulez and Gospel Fuse for the San Francisco Symphony with Seiji Ozawa conducting and Cissy Houston the vocal soloist. Among other of his works for symphony orchestra have been Concerto for Blues Piano and Orchestra(for Jay McShann); Four Movements for A Five-Toed Dragon, conducted by Isaiah Jackson with the American Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of the Sorbonne(Paris); Hit; A Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (Jackson and the Rochester Philharmonic); and Concerto for Flute, Pi'pa, and Orchestra (premiere pending).

In 1980 he founded the innovative electro-acoustic SKYMUSIC ENSEMBLE, which since has performed in America, Europe and Asia, including at La Scala in Milan, Geneva's Made-In-America Festival, and at the 9th Hong Kong Ready-to-Wear (fashion)Show. Based in New York City, SKYMUSIC ENSEMBLE, for which Moore acts as conductor and principal composer, appears at venues ranging from the Lincoln Center Out-Of-Doors Festival (where they performed on August 15, 2007) to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where Moore and the Ensemble were Artists-in-Residence for many years. Carman Moore's intermedia MASS FOR THE 21st CENTURY was commissioned by Lincoln Center, where, at its enthusiastically-received 1994 outdoor performances conducted by the composer, the Mass attracted one of the largest audiences in Lincoln Center history. In December of 1999 it was performed at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa and in New York at the Winter Garden on the World Financial Center's Millennium Series.

Moore's music theatre work includes “Distraughter, or the Great Panda Scanda” and “Club Paradise,” collaborations with the distinguished playwright Charles “Oyamo” Gordon. In 1998 he scored a libretto by Ishmael Reed for the gospel opera, Gethsemane Park, which played in San Francisco's Elaine Hansberry Theatre and at New York's Nuyorican Poets' Cafe during the summer of 2000. A previous collaboration of Moore, Reed, and poet Colleen McElroy, the musical "Wild Gardens of The Loup Garou," was commissioned by the Music Theatre Group/Lenox Arts Centre and subsequently produced both at New York's Judson Memorial Church and at the Bayview Opera House in San Francisco. Moore's comic opera "The Last Chance Planet" received over 70 performances in 1994 by the Dayton Opera Company during Moore's year as Composer-in-Residence to the City of Dayton. Among Moore's scores for theatre have been Yale Rep's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens (starring James Earl Jones and directed by Lloyd Richards) and When The Bough Breaks at LaMama E.T.C. directed by Lawrence Sacharow.

Well-known as a composer for dance, Carman Moore served from 1986-1995 as Master Composer and Co-director of the American Dance Festival's Young Choreographers and Composers Residency Program. Among his scores for dance are Goddess of the Waters, choreographed by Alvin Ailey for the Ballet Company of La Scala; Memories for Anna Sokolow ; Salon for Garth Fagan; The Mourning Kiss for Susana Tambutti of Argentina's Nucleodanza; Concertos for Eun-Mi Cho of Korea; Lunar Transformations for Cleo Parker Robinson; Vehicle for Mark Dendy; Love Notes To Central Park with Sarah Pearson; Touch-Turn-Return for the American Tap Dance Orchestra, and several major works for Donald Byrd and Ruby Shang with whom he was awarded coveted Meet-the-Composer Readers Digest Composer/Choreographer Awards.

Highly-regarded for his scoring of documentary films, Moore's scores include PBS-aired documentaries The Other Side of The Moon (for the 20th anniversary of the first moon landing), Building Hope (on post-W.War II U.S. neighborhoods), and Melinda Camber Porter's The Art of Love. He has also scored Masters of Meditation (honoring 5 faith traditions) for The Temple of Understanding and Hartley Films, and for the United Nations he created the score to

Our Planet Earth, for several years a regular feature on UNTV.

A dedicated educator, Moore has taught at the Yale University School of Music, Queens and Brooklyn Colleges, Carnegie-Mellon University, Manhattanville College, and The New School for Social Research. Particularly interested in reaching out to children, he spent several years in the 1960's, 70's and 80's as a teaching artist for Lincoln Center and Jazzmobile and at The Dalton School. Moore conducted his work and lectured in New York public schools with the Lincoln Center Institute, which commissioned his The Magic Turn Around Town and Save the Dragon. In 1995 he served as consultant to Wynton Marsalis on his popular PBS-broadcast home video series for children, Marsalis On Music. Moore is also the author of two youth-oriented books: Somebody's Angel Child: The Story of Bessie Smith (Dell), and Rock-It (a music history and theory book for Alfred Music Publishers).

Carman Moore has served as Board member and adjudicator for several major organizations, including Composers Forum, the Society of Black Composers, the N.Y. State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition he has been music critic and columnist for the Village Voice and has contributed to The New York Times, The Saturday Review of Literature, Vogue, and Essence among others. During the 1980s Moore also served as arranger and Music Director for various divisions of IBM.

Moore in April 2003 completed a c.d. of 11 pieces for the Interfaith Center of New York inspired by 11 major faith traditions. In addition he has recently completed THE SPIRIT OF KRISHNA, a meditational c.d. including readings from the Bhagavad Gita. Recordings of his self-performed meditational works, HOME and CENTRAL PARK SKETCHES are presently available for purchase. Mr. Moore's score to Michiyo Sato's dance drama The Plum Tree Is In Bloom (for the centennial of Japan's first private women's college) was premiered in Tokyo in October of 2000, and his work for string trio and synthesizer The Mystery of Tao was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and had its world premiere in February 2001 as part of a concert series honoring 52 leading New York composers. In the Spring of 2002 Moore's large, peace-oriented intermedia work for children RASUR (GOD OF PEACE) was premiered in San Jose, Costa Rica. RASUR was commissioned and sponsored by the U.N. University for Peace and the Costa Rican Ministry of Culture. Moore and Oyamo's innovative musical THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, set in 1919 New Orleans, was produced by the Seattle Children's Theatre during '06-07 and received some 80 performances.

Carman Moore's string trio BLUE..RED..GREEN was premiered in October 2007 by Sanford Allen, Jesse Levine, and Astrid Schween, and his PIANO SONATA #2 (The Journey) had its premiere in February 2008 by Anthony Newton for Music de Camara at The Museum of the City of New York.