BIOGRAPHY

Jerré Tanner (b. 1939 - ) is a composer of symphonies and operas, music critic, teacher, author and long-time resident of Hawaii. He studied orchestration with Pulitzer Prize recipient Wayne Peterson at San Francisco State University where he earned an MA degree in composition.

His compositions have been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Polish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and released on the Albany and Vienna Modern Masters labels. He has received awards and grants from ASCAP, Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, National Association of American Composers and Conductors, National and Hawaii Bicentennial Commissions, Huntington Hartford Foundation in Los Angeles, Meet-the-Composer, and two Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance grants administered by the American Music Center. In 1997 the State of Hawaii awarded him the Artist Fellowship in Music Composition. In 1999 and 2001 he received commissions through the American Composers Forum “Continental Harmony” program for composer-in-residence in New Mexico and North Carolina.

The Honolulu Symphony has given the premiere of six of his works and his orchestra, band, choral and solo vocal works have been performed from Shanghai to Krakow. He is listed in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, Who’s Who in America and is a member of the Iowa and American Composers Forums, a retired member of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus and the American Choral Directors Association Hawaii Chapter. His collected manuscripts and papers are housed in Special Collections at Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. He is currently working on Symphony No. 4 in C “Song of Creation”.

Banner: Composer Tanner receiving the 1997 Artist Fellowship Award from Gov. Ben Cayetano