Gail Kubik

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Gail Thompson Kubik (born September 15, 1914 in South Coffeyville , Oklahoma , † July 20, 1984 in Claremont , California ) was an American composer , violinist and music teacher .

life and work

Kubik had piano and violin lessons as a child and at the age of fourteen studied at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Belov (violin), Allen Irvine McHose (music theory), Edward Royce and Bernard Rogers (composition). He also attended East Evening High School and the Hochstein School of Music . With his brothers Howard and Henry Jr. and his mother Evalyn, a vocal student of Ernestine Schumann-Heink , he traveled from 1930 to 1937 as The Kubik Ensemble through New York and the Midwest.

In 1931 he won the Kansas Federation of Music Clubs' annual composition competition with The Night Has a Thousand Eyes . In 1934 he graduated with honors from the Eastman School of Music, violin and composition, and began teaching violin, conducting and orchestration at Monmouth College . From 1936 he taught at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. In the same year NBC Radio introduced Kubiks chamber music in its Music Guild series .

In 1937 Kubik began studying for a dissertation at Harvard University with Walter Piston and Nadia Boulanger . From 1938 to 1940 he taught composition, orchestration, and music history at the Teachers College of Columbia University . He also performed his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra as a soloist with the Chicago Civic , Rochester Civic and New York Orchestras . From 1941 he lived as a freelance composer.

With his second violin concerto, Kubik won the Jascha Heifetz-Carl-Fischer Prize in 1941 . In 1942 he was Advisor to the Bureau of Motion Pictures of the Office of War Information , the following year he became a composer for the Army Air Corp's First Motion Picture Unit into the army. For the music for the film The World at War , he received the award for the best documentary film music of the year.

After retiring from the army in 1946, he became a professor of music at the University of Southern California . After working as a film composer in Hollywood, he went to Rome in 1950 and taught at the American Academy , and from 1952 as a visiting professor at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia .

In 1952 Kubik received a Pulitzer Prize for the Symphony Concertante . At the Edinburgh Film Festival 1953 he was awarded for the film Transatlantic . He has worked as a composer and conductor with the Orchestra Sinfonica della Radio Italiana , the London Philharmonic Orchestra , the BBC Orchestra and the Orchester Symphonique de Paris, and has composed songs based on poems by Theodore Roethke . His first symphony was commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra from 1954 to 1955.

In 1955 Kubik composed the music for Paramount Studios for the film On a Day Like Any Other The Desperate Hours, starring Fredric March and Humphrey Bogart . Directed by William Wyler , music became a mainstay of the film.

From 1959 to 1967 he lived again in Europe. Between 1968 and 1970 he made lecture tours through the USA, he was also visiting professor at Kansas State University and Gettysburg College and was composer in residence at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate School . In 1975 he was a visiting professor at California State University , and in 1978 at Mount San Antonio Junior College . After his retirement in 1980, he lived mainly in France.

In addition to three symphonies and four violin concertos, Kubik composed further orchestral works, chamber music, songs and two operas.

Awards

  • 1942: Award for best documentary film music of the year for the film The World at War

Filmography (selection)

  • 1942: (The World at War)
  • 1944: (The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress)
  • 1950: (The Miner's Daughter)
  • 1951: (Gerald McBoing-Boing)
  • 1955: On a Day Like Any Other (The Desperate Hours)

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Kubik, Gail
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kubik, Gail Thompson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer, violinist and music educator
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH South Coffeyville , Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1984
Place of death Claremont , California