Phillip Ramey

Phillip Ramey (born September 12, 1939 in Elmhurst, Illinois, United States) is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music. He studied composition with the Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin from 1959 to 1962, first at the International Academy of Music in Nice, France, then at DePaul University in Chicago. He later studied composition with Jack Beeson at Columbia University (1962–65). Ramey has had professional associations with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, William Schuman, David Diamond and Vladimir Horowitz. Thomson honored him with a musical portrait for piano titled "Phillip Ramey: Thinking Hard," and Copland dedicated two piano pieces to him: "Midsummer Nocturne" and "Proclamation." For many years, Ramey was a close friend and a neighbor of Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco, where he has summered regularly. In 2017, the New York Public Library acquired Ramey's archive of manuscripts, scores and recordings of his music, which will be catalogued and made available for scholarly research. Ramey is the composer of orchestral works, including three piano concertos, along with chamber music and many works for solo piano, among them ten sonatas. In 1993 his Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate its 150th Anniversary, was premiered by that orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, with Philip Myers as soloist. On Nov. 14, 1985, Proclamation for Orchestra, Ramey's orchestration of Copland's Proclamation for Piano, received an unusual bi-coastal premiere: by the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. (The New York Philharmonic concert was telecast as "Aaron Copland's 85th Birthday," episode 61 of the Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.) Ramey's music has been published by Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, C. F. Peters and Edward B. Marks, among other firms. Ramey is the author of several hundred liner notes and int