Discipline: Music Composition

Ann McMillan

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1970, 1973, 1977, 1982
Ann McMillan (1923-1994) was an American composer. She graduated from Bennington College in 1945, having majored in composition and French horn. She helped open the LP program for classical music at RCA Victor Records and in the 1950s met Edgard Varèse. She composed a film score for Rhino Safari, a Norwegian documentary, and broadcast radio essays written for CBS's French and English networks. In 1965 she became music director of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City. She left the station staff in 1968 to concentrate on composing. McMillan was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a CAPS grant and resident Fellowships at MacDowell and Ossabaw Island Project. Commissions included an orchestra work for Joel Thome's orchestra of Our Time of New York City, and a violin and tape piece for Manuel Enriquez of Mexico City, works for Moses Asch, Max Lifchitz, and Quintet of the Americas. She was guest editor of the Contemporary Music Review. April-Episode, for live performance and tape for the harpsichord, was performed by Joseph Payne at Fenton House, London's Camden Festival, March 30, 1979. The tape part of that piece is a complete piece in itself, called Episode. In 1977 her music was presented at the 13th annual Avant Garde Festival in New York City, commissioned by Charlotte Moorman and the Port Authority of New York.

Studios

Monday Music

Ann McMillan worked in the Monday Music studio.

Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…

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