Vivian Fine

Born in 1913 in Chicago, pianist/composer Vivian Fine was a child prodigy. She won a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College at age five. Later she studied with Ruth Crawford Seeger, Djane Lavoie-Herz, and Adolf Weidig. She moved to New York in 1931, studying piano with Abby Whiteside and Roger Sessions. Around 1935, Fine became the rehearsal pianist for dance companies around New York and began writing pieces for them. Her ballet scores include "The Race for Life" performed by Doris Humphrey, "Opus 51" for Charles Weidman, "Tragic Exodus" and "They Too Are Exiles" for Hanya Holm, "Alcestis" for Martha Graham, and "My Son, My Enemy" for Jose Limon. Her symphonic compositions include "Elegiac Song" and "Meeting for Equal Rights1866." In 1938, Fine helped found the American Composers Alliance and served as the vice president for four years beginning in 1961. One of her best-known works is the 1978 opera The Women in the Garden, which quoted the writings of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Isadora Duncan. One of her final works was the 1994 multimedia opera The Memoirs of Uliana Rooney. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1980. Fine taught composition at New York University, the Julliard School of Music, the State University of New York at Postdam, and Bennington College in Vermont. At the age of 86, Vivian Fine died after being in an automobile accident in Bennington, VT, on March 20, 2000. Vivian Fine-related releases are 20th Century Harpsichord, Vol. 2 - Barbara Harbach, and Fine: Concertante and Five Premiers - Chamber Works With Guitar. ~ Ed Hogan