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World-class composer Benjamin Lees finds a quiet home in the desert.By Keith BushA symphony commissioned by a Delaware orchestra, recorded by German musicians and supported in part by the Swedish government earned a 2004 Grammy Award nomination for best contemporary composition. Its composer, Benjamin Lees, was born in China and grew up in San Francisco, lived for several years in Europe, taught at Julliard in New York and has had works performed before appreciative audiences in several countries. So in which cultural capital does this international figure choose to live? Lees has settled in Palm Springs, Calif., where he feels cushioned from the distractions and pressures of the city. �You don�t have the torrent of phone calls and things that you really have to attend to,� Lees says. �When we lived on Long Island, there were always phone calls. Somebody says you have to have a meeting now and they already assume that you will be there. So, there goes part of the work you were planning to do that day. In Palm Springs, you finish your breakfast and you get to work, and that�s truly the story. The climate, of course, is good for writing,� Lees says. �We don�t have winter where we have to start shoveling and chopping away at ice.� Modern technology enables him to stay plugged in to the artistic centers of the world. �There will be a series of concerts of my music in New York in March, so of course there are e-mails, thank God for that, and occasionally they will call just to clarify some details. Today, you can always be found, so that part is easy.� Naturally, the weather is a plus. �The climate of course is very good for writing,� Lees says. �In other words, we don�t have the season of winter, where we have to start shoveling and chopping away at ice.� And the cultural climate has improved dramatically, Lees says, pointing to the performing arts series at the Annenberg Theater as an example. �Palm Springs has changed quite a bit from what it was 25 or 30 years ago,� Lees says. �Originally, it was a place where you came and relaxed and could play golf and tennis and all that, and the arts were not that prominent. Right now, the arts are far more prominent than they ever have been. My wife is a docent at the Palm Springs Desert Museum, which is something that really brings people in and leaves them sort of gazing in wonder.� A Life in MusicLees started piano lessons at 5 and began composing at 15. His first exposure to a broad audience came in 1954 when the NBC Orchestra performed his work on a national broadcast. In the next few years he received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. During the 1960s and �70s, he taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Manhattan School of Music and the Julliard School of Music.Building on classical structures and rejecting atonal composition, Lees has produced a number of symphonies and concertante works. He hesitates to name a favorite, saying parents love all their children equally. �But,� he confesses, �some are more equal than others.� He singles out his Symphony No. 4, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1985. �They wanted to have a work that would somehow commemorate the Holocaust, and they wanted a large piece. So, they got a large piece. It�s an hour in length, for full orchestra, with a lot of violin solos.� Subtitled �Memorial Candles,� it provides a setting for poems written by a holocaust survivor and aims to depict various stages of terror through music. Symphony No. 5, for which Lees received his Grammy nomination, represents a marked contrast in tone. Commemorating the arrival of Swedish immigrants in Delaware in the 17th century, it begins with a mood of apprehension that shifts to expectation and leads to an upbeat conclusion. �The commissions always vary, and that makes it very interesting,� Lees says. In quick succession, Lees wrote a piece for flute, clarinet, cello, and piano for Pacific Serenade in Los Angeles, set an Edward Lear poem to music for the Young People�s Chorus of New York City, and a work for Baltimore violinist Ellen Orner. �So that was the year, and all of these had very tight deadlines, and had it been written in New York, I�m not sure I really could have finished them. But down here, it was very nice.� Lee�s current project involves the Cypress Spring Quartet of San Francisco. �Their project has been to study, perform, and record the quartets that I have written. Right now they have asked for Spring Quartet No. 6, something the entire world is obviously thirsting for. They will premiere it and perform it and then record all six, and we are now discussing which label it will be on.�
Following that, Lees, who turns 81 this January, has no plans to retire. �The nice thing about this field,� he says, �is there�s no age limit.�
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