Biography - Douglas J. Cuomo

Douglas J. Cuomo
www.douglasjcuomo.com
"Like the best of today’s composers, from the late Lou Harrison to
Osvaldo Golijov, Cuomo has developed a lingua franca that is
international enough to allow the speakers of different musical
languages to communicate... The music occupies a space that is
not bound by geography or chronology." --John Schaefer, WNYC
Critics have described the music of Douglas J. Cuomo as “jolting,
haunting, varied, infectious. . . frankly, it is ingenious” and
“eighteen minutes of velocity and ecstasy. . . mesmerizing . . .
fiercely American in the sense of Whitman, Hart Crane and Ives.”
as well as “hugely effective musically, as well as awe-inspiring”,
“irresistible” and “awesome”.
Biography
Douglas J. Cuomo has composed highly acclaimed and original music for concert and theatrical
stages, television, and film. His music, with influences from jazz, world music, classical, and
popular sources, is as personal, distinctive, and recognizable as it is wide-ranging. His
compositions range from well-known television themes — for Sex and the City and Now with
Bill Moyers, among others — to evening-length works for theater, including the operas Doubt
and Arjuna's Dilemma.
Cuomo's expressive musical language, with its arresting juxtapositions of sound and style, is a
natural outgrowth of his eclectic background and training. Born in Tucson, Arizona, raised in the
San Francisco Bay Area and Amherst, Massachusetts, Cuomo began playing the trumpet in grade
school and switched to guitar at the age of 12. While still in high school he studied with jazz
greats Max Roach and Archie Shepp at the University of Massachusetts.
He began his professional musical career at the age of 18, touring the country with a Las Vegas
show band. He alternated years of college with years on the road as a guitarist, studying jazz,
world music and ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He completed his
undergraduate studies at the University of Miami (Coral Gables) with a degree in jazz
performance. Upon graduating, he immediately moved to New York and began to tour with jazz
singer Arthur Prysock and his brother Red, and to record with pop and jazz acts.
After two years on the road as a jazz guitarist, Cuomo decided to focus on composition, and
returned to New York City. In search of outlets for his creative work, he composed for downtown
theater productions, student films, and television documentaries. In doing so, he developed a
notable talent for integrating music, image, and narrative.
Cuomo's first work to garner public notice was Atomic Opera, which was performed at the Ohio
Theatre in downtown New York City. The New York Times wrote that Cuomo's "elegiac and
eerie" score "blends electronically treated classical fragments and vintage kitsch, suggests the
breaking down and reconstitution of matter into something ominous and uncontrollable." That
breakthrough led to steady work composing music for Broadway productions at the Roundabout
Theatre. He scored fifteen productions for the Roundabout, including The Women, Design For
Living, Hamlet, The Visit, and the Tony-Award winning Anna Christie.
In television, his first major success came with the Peabody Award-winning NBC drama
Homicide: Life On The Street, for which he scored 120 episodes over the course of seven
seasons. His credits include numerous series, movies, and documentaries for CBS, NBC, ABC,
HBO and VH1, among others. He has also scored a number of independent films, including
Revolution #9, The Terrorist, and most recently, Crazy Love, with a soundtrack featuring pianist
Billy Childs and trumpeter Chris Botti.
Cuomo is known for creating some of the most distinctive theme music on television today.
Examples include the theme to Sex & The City (HBO), praised by The New Yorker magazine for
its "unusual, edgy salsa flavor;" the saxophone quartet music that opens and closes Now with Bill
Moyers (PBS), and the keening Middle Eastern vocals and frenetic Turkish drumming combined
with a churning synthesizer bed for Wide Angle (PBS).
Cuomo has received numerous grants and awards including: OPERA America Opera Fund
Grant; two National Endowment of the Arts awards for Artistic Excellence in the Creation and
Development of New Work; two NYSCA commissioning grants; American Music Center's
Composer Assistance grant; NYSCA recording grant; Argosy Foundation Grant; Mary Flagler
Carey Charitable Trust for development, and others. Residencies include the MacDowell
Colony, The Hermitage Foundation, and Blue Mountain Artist Colony;. He and has received
three BMI Television Music Awards and his theme for Sex and The City was chosen by TV
Guide as one of the top 50 television themes of all time.
He has lectured widely at institutions including New York University, Wesleyan University (CT),
University of Miami (FL), University of California at San Diego, Hunter College, Hofstra
University, The Asia Society (NY), and the Rubin Museum (NY), The Guggenheim Museum
(NY), Opera America (NYC), The US Navy CNO Strategic Studies Group, and at the Carnegie
Hall Choral Institute. Cuomo also performs as a guitarist with his band, playing jazz
interpretations of his film and television work at venues including Birdland, The Knitting Factory
and others.
Douglas J. Cuomo’s compositions are published by Schott Music.
Recent significant works include:
Doubt, an opera based on the play and movie, with a libretto by John Patrick Shanley.
Commissioned by the Minnesota Opera, premiering in January 2013. The cast includes Denyse
Graves, Christine Brewer, Matthew Worth and Adriana Zabala, directed by Kevin Newbury.
A Winter's Journey, a setting of Wilhelm Müller's text for Schubert's Winterreise song cycle,
scored for mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton, trumpeter Frank London and Cuomo on guitar and
electronics, to be produced by Music-Theatre Group and directed by David Schwiezer, scheduled
to premiere in 2013.
Black Diamond Express Train to Hell, a co-commission by the American Composers Orchestra
and the Orchestra of the Swan. This double concerto for orchestra, cello and sampler was
premiered by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2010, with Maya Beiser
and the composer as soloists. Incorporating a sampled sermon from 1927 by the Chicago
preacher A.W. Nix that prefigures the techniques and swagger of the blues, gospel, R&B and
hiphop, this piece is a breath-taking fantasia reflecting on early role of religion, pop culture and
the ecstatic in the 20th century African-American experience.
Arjuna's Dilemma, a 70-minute opera-oratorio incorporating an Indian vocalist, a classically
trained tenor, a four-member female chorus, a tabla player, an improvising tenor saxophonist,
and a ten-piece chamber ensemble. A work of both sweeping grandeur and piercing intimacy,
Arjuna's Dilemma seamlessly melds classical, jazz and traditional Indian musical idioms as it
explores ancient themes that remain startlingly topical: the claims of conscience and duty in a
time of war; the search for self-knowledge in a changing world. Produced by Music-Theatre
Group, the piece premiered in 2008 at The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival.
The New York Times described Arjuna's Dilemma as "an opera with an appealing and
unabashedly eclectic score." A recording of Arjuna's Dilemma, performed by an array of
distinguished artists including Indian singer Amit Chatterjee, members of Anonymous 4 and the
Philip Glass Ensemble, tenor Tony Boutté, Badal Roy, Ethel, pianist Kathleen Supove, and
bassist Robert Black of the Bang on a Can All Stars, was released on the Innova Records label.
Only Breath, commissioned and performed by Maya Beiser, at The International Festival of Arts
& Ideas, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall and others (2008). Based on a Rumi poem of the same name this
piece for cello and electronics is part of Ms. Beiser's evening length theatrical program
Provenance.