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Michael Daugherty has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by contemporary American popular culture. His Metropolis Symphony (1988-93) for orchestra and Bizarro (1993) for symphonic winds are a tribute to the Superman comics, recorded by conductor David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Argo. These same performers recorded Daugherty's Desi (1991) for symphonic winds on the Argo CD Dance Mix. Works commissioned and recorded on Nonesuch by the Kronos Quartet include Elvis Everywhere (1993) for three Elvis impersonators and string quartet, and Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover (1992). Daugherty's opera Jackie 0 (1997) was premiered and recorded by the Houston Grand Opera for Argo. American /cons, an Argo CD devoted to Daugherty's chamber music, features the London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman and Marcus Stenz, and Dogs of Desire, conducted by David Alan Miller.

Daugherty's music has been performed by prominent orchestras and ensembles in the United States, such as the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, and the Kronos Quartet. Performances abroad have been given by the Melbourne Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra (London), the Tonhalle-Orchester Zi.irich, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the London Sinfonietta, and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble.

Daugherty has received numerous awards for his music, including recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His music is published exclusively by Peermusic Classical, New York and represented in Europe by Faber Music Ltd., London.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. Daugherty grew up playing keyboards in jazz, rock, and funk bands in Iowa. At North Texas State University (1972-76) he continued performing jazz and composed his first orchestral work. In 1976 he moved to New York City, where he studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music and played piano for modem dance companies.

In the following years, Daugherty divided his time between Europe and the United States. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris, composing computer music at IRCAM (1979-80). At Yale University (1980-82) he studied with composers Earle Brown, Jacob Druckman, Bernard Rands, and Roger Reynolds; during this time he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York City. Daugherty moved to Amsterdam and pursued further studies with Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84).

Upon his return to America, Daugherty performed live synthesizer concerts of his own music with classic silent film, and played jazz piano in lounges and nightclubs. He received a doctorate degree in music composition from Yale University in 1986, and came to national attention as a composer when Snap!-Blue Like an Orange (1987) won a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. After teaching music composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1986 to 1991, Daugherty joined the music composition faculty at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1999, he began a four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Dead Elvis was co-commissioned by Chuck Ullery, the Grand Tetons Festival and Boston Musica Viva. The first West Coast performance took place July 1993 at the Grand Tetons Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with Chuck Ullery, bassoonist, and Michael Daugherty conducting. The first East Coast performance took place in October 1993, at the University of Michigan, with Richard Pittman conducting the Boston Musica Viva, and George Sakakeeny playing bassoon.

No rock and roll personality seems to have inspired as much speculation, adulation, and imper­sonation as Elvis Presley (1935-77). In Dead Elvis (1993), the bassoon soloist is an Elvis imper­sonator accompanied by a chamber ensemble. It is more than a coincidence that Dead Elvis is scored for the same instrumentation as Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat (1918), in which a soldier sells his violin, and his soul, to the devil for a magic book. I offer a new spin on this Faustian scenario: a rock star sells out to Hollywood, Colonel Parker, and Las Vegas for wealth and fame. I use Dies irae-a medieval Latin chant for the Day of Judgment-as the principal musical theme in my composition to pose the question, is Elvis dead or alive beyond the grave of Graceland? In Dead Elvis we hear fast and slow fifties rock and roll ostinati in the double bass, violin, and bongos, while the bassoonist gyrates, double-tongues, and croons his way through variations of Dies irae.

Elvis is part of American culture, history, and mythology, for better or for worse. If you want to understand America and all its riddles, sooner or later you will have to deal with (Dead) Elvis.

- Michael Daugherty

Dead Elvis is recorded by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman, on an Argo CD devoted to Michael Daugherty's chamber music entitled American Icons (458 145-2).

First printed in 2000.

Photo: The Cleveland Plain Dealer