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Published on: 4/17/2006
Last Visited: 6/24/2009
CRAIG URQUHART
Composer/solo pianist Craig Urquhart creates rich melodic landscapes which blossom into dramatic journeys from the heart.
Expressing his passion for the environment as well as a belief in the healing power of music, while drawing upon the influences of classical music's keyboard masters, Urquhart has become one of modern acoustic New Age's most transcendent voices.
A well-known composer of American classical art songs, including musical settings of poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Urquhart has had his songs performed and recorded by world famous baritone Thomas Hampson and other artists.
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Urquhart's most recent two CDs have been released on his own Heart Earth Music record label.
"I call my label Heart Earth Music because my music is a link between the heart and the Earth," he says.
"These are the things I believe in, and I have enjoyed the way my music has touched people in unique and personal ways."
His timeless sound and compositional focus has gradually shifted from classical music to New Age.
His lyrical music draws upon the influence of such iconic classical keyboard composers as Bach, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Debussy, Satie and Copland, but Urquhart also considers pop/rock musicians Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, and Brian Eno as creative influences.
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The classically trained Urquhart had the extraordinary fortune to work as an assistant to the man whom he credits with inspiring his entire musical career, Maestro Leonard Bernstein.
Urquhart's love of the piano began at age six, when he began taking piano lessons as a child growing up in Michigan, however he credits Bernstein's CBS series The Young People's Concerts with The New York Philharmonic as "literally educating a whole generation of kids about music, including myself.
Moving to New York City after receiving his Master's in Composition from the University of Michigan, Urquhart impulsively left some of his music with Bernstein's Manhattan doorman; the Maestro, impressed, called Urquhart back, and the two became friends.
In 1985 Urquhart was hired as Bernstein's Personal Assistant, and worked for Bernstein until the composer's death in 1990.
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Urquhart has been actively involved in a wide array of social and environmental causes over the years, performing twice at the United Nations for National AIDS Awareness Day and Earth Day, as well as at benefit concerts for such organizations as the Tidewater AIDS Taskforce of Norfolk, Virginia, Momentum AIDS Project in New York and Bread & Roses AIDS hospice in Connecticut.
His "The Wonder of Miracles" was choreographed by the Turtle's Dance Company for a memorial concert at the Cathedral St. John the Divine.
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One of two pianos owned by Urquhart, the Bösendorfer's illustrious former home was Bernstein's lavish suite in Vienna's Hotel Bristol.
The piano is autographed twice by the Maestro and is inscribed with the date of his final visit to Austria.
Craig Urquhart's current recording is Evocation, released on his own label Heart Earth Music.
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