List of Works (includes selected mp3 recordings)
John Rommereim, Composer
List of Works (includes selected mp3 recordings)
John Christian Rommereim is Professor of Music at Grinnell College, where he has taught since 1988. During his first decade at Grinnell, his scholarly work was centered in the areas of Russian choral music and early music performance. In the last few years, he has established a reputation as a composer as well. The New York Times recently praised the “richly expressive” character of his vocal writing. From 2008 to 2010, he is Composer-in-Residence with the Rose Ensemble, an award winning professional group centered in the Twin Cities. Mr. Rommereim has composed choral/orchestral works, works for choir with various instruments, and works for voice and piano, guitar, flute, saxophone quartet, and string quartet. He is the recipient of commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Iowa Choral Directors Association, and the Iowa Arts Council. His work for choir and guitar, "Calm on the Listening Ear Of Night" won the 2006 Welcome Christmas carol contest, sponsored by VocalEssence, Philip Brunelle, director. In 2003, he composed Convivencia, a six-movement work for choir, string quartet, and harp, based on ancient love poetry from Jewish, Islamic, and Christian traditions. The fifth movement of Convivencia, a setting of poetry by the 13th-century Sufi poet/philosopher, Ibn Arabi, received second place in the 2005 Nuvovox choral award. In October of 2006, Voces Novae, of Bloomington, Indiana, premiered the choral cycle in its entirety, featuring it on a special concert co-sponsored by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian organisations. Three additional performances of the work occured in New York and Iowa in 2008, and The Interfaith Project of Omaha, Nebraska is currently planning performances in 2010. The Minneapolis-based ensemble, Magnum Chorum premiered Rommereim's "Set Me As A Seal," commissioned by the Iowa Choral Directors Association and the Iowa Composers Forum, in July of 2006. In February of 2006, baritone Thomas Meglioranza premiered his song cycle, Into the Still Hollow at Symphony Space, in New York City. Guitar virtuoso Petar Jankovic performed his “Upon the Blue Guitar” on a European concert tour in 2006. His choral/orchestral work Utopia (a setting of a poem by Wislawa Szymborska) was premiered by the Grinnell Singers and the Prague Radio Orchestra in March of 2000. Rommereim's choral works are published by Oxford University Press , Roger Dean, and earthsongs. Rommereim holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College, a master’s degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a doctor of musical arts degree in choral conducting from the University of Kansas.
Mr. Rommereim has pursued an ideal in his teaching and scholarship that avoids compartmentalizing the arts, prizes experiential learning, and actively pursues engagement across disciplines. In the spring of 2008, he taught a course on music and poetry in collaboration with English professor Ralph Savarese. The course brought together student composers and poets in collaborative creative projects. For his dissertation, Mr. Rommereim completed an English translation and analysis of a treatise by the Russian choral conductor Pavel Chesnokov, The Choir and How to Direct It (Khor i upravlenie im). Chesnokov’s book offers key insights into the performance practice that was in place during the great flowering of choral music that occurred around the turn of the twentieth century in Russia, and which produced masterworks such as Rachmaninov’s Vespers and his Divine Liturgy. In the summer of 2009, Musica Russica will be publishing Rommereim's translation, with a foreword by Kenneth Jennings. Mr. Rommereim has written several journal articles in the area of Russian choral music, and he has produced two CDs of Russian choral music with the Grinnell Choirs. In 2000, he brought the Grinnell Singers to perform at the famed Glinka Cappella in St. Petersburg, and to work with the Rector of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Vladislav Chernushenko.
During his first decade at Grinnell, Mr. Rommereim founded a professional early music ensemble, the Baroque Orchestra of Iowa, which afforded the Grinnell Singers the opportunity to learn about baroque music by collaborating with some of the country’s finest baroque specialists, who were flown in from afar to pursue these projects. He performed frequently as a harpsichordist, playing continuo in various chamber ensembles, conducting the orchestra from the keyboard, appearing as soloist in J. S. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and performing on a CD that was released commercially. Mr. Rommereim has also continued to perform as a singer, appearing in recitals and as a baritone soloist for choral/orchestral works such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’s German Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams's Dona Nobis Pacem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana.