2011-2012 Performances
J. Mark Scearce is one of North Carolina’s most recognized and performed composers. Recipient of the 2010 Raleigh Medal of Arts and the 2009 International Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Music Composition, Scearce has 60 active titles in his catalogue, including musical settings of more than 120 texts by 30 poets.
Since returning to North Carolina seven years ago to head the Music Department at NC State, Scearce has had 300 performances of 30 works by such organizations as The North Carolina Symphony, Carolina Ballet, North Carolina Master Chorale, Raleigh Chamber Music Guild, Mallarme Chamber Players, Long Leaf Opera, and the Borromeo, Fry Street, Ciompi, and Ethel string quartets.
His latest CD, The 99 Beautiful Names of God, released on Albany Records performed by pianist John Cheek, is hailed by Fanfare magazine as “remarkably nuanced and thoughtful.” The American Record Guide calls it “a lofty idea imaginatively realized…a serious engagement with Islamic culture—something all too rare in classical Western music.”
The North Carolina Symphony opens the 2011-12 season with the fifth work by Scearce the organization has programmed—This Thread, a powerful setting of Toni Morrison’s “The Dead of September 11”. Previous works of Scearce’s performed by the NCS include Urban Primitive, XL, Antaeus, and Ecce Stella in collaboration with the North Carolina Master Chorale. Two of those works were commissions: XL, to open Meymandi Concert Hall in 2001, and Antaeus, a concerto for principal bassist Leonid Finkelshteyn premiered in 2009, which the International Bass Journal calls “highly effective…real originality…eminently approachable…containing some especially beautiful writing.”
Also this season, the Carolina Ballet is remounting the fifth and sixth ballets by Scearce commissioned and premiered by that organization last season: Dracula and Masque of the Red Death. Previous works of Scearce’s performed by Carolina Ballet include Guernica, Song of the Dead, Endymion’s Sleep, and The Kreutzer Sonata.
The recipient of five advanced degrees in music, philosophy and religion, including the doctorate in composition from Indiana University, Scearce has won six international music competitions, and his music has been recorded on seven commercial compact discs on the Delos, Warner Bros, Capstone, Centaur, Albany, and Equilibrium labels, and on a Sony 4-channel SACD available online at frystreetquartet.com.
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