tom vignieri
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Composer and classical music producer Tom Vignieri (b.1961) studied piano and composition at Carthage College, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and Boston University prior to embarking on a career in arts management at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. There he served as director of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, a program for talented young musicians held in conjunction with the Boston Symphony's Tanglewood Music Center.
He went on to serve as artistic administrator of the Handel and Haydn Society, a professional chorus and period instrument ensemble in Boston, working with music directors Christopher Hogwood and Grant Llewellyn. He is currently music producer of From the Top, a nationally distributed NPR and PBS program that celebrates America's best young classical musicians. The Emmy winning television series, From the Top at Carnegie Hall, is produced in partnership with WGBH Boston, Carnegie Hall and Don Mischer Productions in Los Angeles, and the radio show is heard on some 250 stations nationwide with more than 700,000 weekly listeners ranking it among the top programs on public radio.
As a composer his works have been performed and broadcast across North America and the UK. His trio for tenor, oboe and piano entitled My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer was given its New York premiere at Lincoln Center and his choral work The Torch of Love was featured in a private performance at Handel House Museum in London.
His piece Hodie Christus natus est for chorus, organ and baritone soloist was specially commissioned by Grant Llewellyn for the 2005 Handel and Haydn Society recording All is Bright which debuted at No.8 on the Billboard Classical charts. Hodie was given special mention in record reviews by The Boston Globe, MusicWeb International, Gramophone Magazine and The Daily Telegraph of London. It was recently performed by The Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and it was featured on a national Christmas Day broadcast in Canada by CBC Radio, both under the direction of Julian Wachner.
Orchestral works such as An American Hymn, Concordia, Sonic Debate and Cape Ann Overture have been commissioned and performed by Yoichi Udagawa and his Cape Ann, Melrose and Quincy symphonies and broadcast on cable television and public radio. An American Hymn was most recently performed by the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra in Devon, England. Other recent performances include concerts by New York Pops conductor Steven Reineke with orchestras in Michigan and New York, and by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
He received a commission from the Handel and Haydn Society in 2009 for a new work to commemorate the 250th anniversary year of George Frideric Handel. The piece, entitled Fanfare of Voices, features antiphonal choirs, trumpets, drums & organ and is set to words drawn from Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day by John Dryden, a text that Handel himself set in 1739. Fanfare of Voices was premiered by Grant Llewellyn and the Handel and Haydn Society at Symphony Hall, Boston in March 2009.
His most recent work, There Will Come Soft Rains, was commissioned by the Columbus Children’s Choir and The Chamber Music Connection for the collaborative New American Music Project in Columbus, Ohio. The piece was written for treble choir and string orchestra and is set to a poem by American poet Sara Teasdale. It will be premiered in March 2010 at Denison University in Granville, Ohio and at Worthington Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio.