Award-winning composer and pianist John Musto is regarded as one of the most versatile musicians before the public today. His richly allusive and eclectic style wedded to an exacting compositional technique has won him critical and audience acclaim throughout the world.
Musto's most recent collaboration with librettist Mark Campbell, the opera Later the Same Evening, inspired by five paintings of Edward Hopper, was commissioned by the University of Maryland, and premiered to acclaim at Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in November 2007. The new opera follows on the success of Musto and Campbell’s comic opera Volpone (2004), commissioned and premiered by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in March 2004, and revived there in June 2007. Leon Major directed both operas. Musto and Campbell’s next projects are a one-act chamber opera for the New York Festival of Song and a full evening work co-commissioned by Opera Theater St. Louis and Wolf Trap.
In October 2006, a CD of Musto's chamber music, performed by Music From Copland House, was released on Koch International, rounding out an extraordinary year. That May, Musto received the 2006 Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given to “a mid-career composer of demonstrated talent.” And, in a feat recalling the classical era, he was the soloist in the premiere performances of his two Piano Concertos. The second concerto was performed first, in April 2006 at The Miller Theatre, New York City; George Steel led the Gotham Chamber Orchestra. In July, Michael Barrett conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in the premiere of Musto's Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Caramoor International Music Festival. The performance capped Musto's 2005-06 composer-in-residency at Caramoor.
The Book of Uncommon Prayer, Musto's extended work for four singers and piano, is a summation of the many compositional styles he has explored in collections of songs over the years, based primarily on American poets. The work was commissioned by Carnegie Hall, and was premiered in an all-Musto concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre in 2001.
Musto was composer-in-residence at the 1999 Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, where his music was performed by the Dallas and Rochester Symphonies. His Divertimento, commissioned by the Festival, was premiered by eighth blackbird. The Dallas Symphony later commissioned Musto's Passacaglia for orchestra, and premiered it under conductor Andrew Litton in January 2003. In 1997, his orchestral song cycle Dove Sta Amore was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has been awarded two Emmys by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his scores for the documentary films Into the Light and Brick City Lessons, for which he also received a 1999 CINE Golden Eagle Award. His music for the film George Segal: An American Still Life, received a CINE award in 2001. Mr. Musto contributed original music to HBO’s ’Twas the Night, which first aired on HBO Family over the 2001 Christmas holiday.
John Musto served as new music coordinator for the New York Festival of Song from 1992-94 and has been a guest lecturer at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. His compositions have been recorded for Sony Classical, Angel/EMI, Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, MusicMasters, Innova, Channel Classics, Albany Records and New World Records. As a pianist, he has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Nonesuch and EMI. His music is published by Peermusic Classical, New York and Hamburg.
Conductor Glen Cortese led the singers and the National Gallery Orchestra in an exciting performance; Musto's music courses through impressions of unhinged tonal harmonies along with brilliantly conceived counterpoint, especially in the cast's magnificently rendered ensembles. The vocal solos often waft into heightened expression, capturing the pitches and rhythms of real speech.
- Cecilia Porter, The Washington Post, on Later the Same Evening
A masterpiece was born at the Barns of Wolf Trap. [Musto's] score was highly eclectic with flavors that include jazz, Broadway, a bit of bel canto, a lot of verismo, and a fleeting tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan. In all modes … the music is delightfully listener-friendly.
- Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, on Volpone
His grandly jazzy Passacaglia for large orchestra (2003) sounds like Bach rediscovered by Krazy Kat. His Five Piano Rags (1995) cast the smoky nonchalance of Scott Joplin in a Rachmaninoff glow. His opera Volpone, which had an acclaimed premiere at the Wolf Trap Festival last March, employs everything from Broadway to bel canto in a ferociously clever musical adaptation of Ben Jonson’s play. Like [Leonard] Bernstein, Mr. Musto is not afraid to entertain.
- Charles Michener, The New York Sun
If there is a finer composer of song with piano alive and working in the world today, I would very much like to know his or her name.
- Graham Johnson