1. Home
2.  > 
3. Academics
4.  > 
5. Faculty Bios
6.  > 
7. Division of the Arts
8.  > 
9. John Myers

John Myers

 

Areas of Specialization

• Jazz
• Composition
• Ethnomusicology
• Animation
• Guitar performance

Interests

Research Interests: New computer-based art forms and their relationship with traditional art forms, including implications for representing and defending cultural diversity

Teaching Interests: Jazz, music theory, interactive arts, world music

Other Interests: Chinese language

Biography

PhD, University of Maryland at Baltimore
MM, Howard University
BA, Towson State University

Dr. Myers is a composer, performer, media developer, and author, and has a broad range of activities that reflect his expanding interests and areas of professional engagement. He often performs as a guitarist, either as a soloist or in ensembles, playing jazz and Western classical music. Dr. Myers has been teaching at Simon’s Rock since 1987.

Highlights

• The world premiere of his composition “In Search of the Bridges” in four movements, for chorus, soloists, and instrumental ensemble, was performed by Crescendo in 2023, conducted by Christine Gevert. The composition includes settings of poems by contemporary authors of African-American, Latin American, South Asian, and Appalachian descent: Carole Boston Weatherford (North Carolina), Circe Maia (Uruguay), Prageeta Sharma (Pamona College, CA), and Marilou Awiakta (Tennessee). The performances, which included Dr, Myers on classical guitar and clarinet, were given at Trinity Church, Lime Rock CT, and St. James Place, Great Barrington MA.
• His extended composition for chorus, narrator, and instrumental ensemble; “The West Lake Cycle” was awarded the Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker Award in 2014. His postgraduate work was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.
• His composition “Paintings in Song: Visions of Norman Rockwell,” commissioned by Crescendo Chorus, premiered in April 2017, is a nine-movement suite for 60 singers and instrumental ensemble, with each movement based on a single iconic Norman Rockwell paining spanning the 1920s through 1960s. A 2018 performance at the Norman Rockwell Museum was live-streamed and viewed over 1400 times at the time of the concert.
• In April 2003, working with Swiss artist Etienne Delessert and Alice Myers, he created a series of wide-screen (30- x 60-foot) digital animations, for live performances by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra of Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye. They created an interactive DVD computer installation for an exhibit at the Visual Arts Museum at the School for Visual Arts in New York City, Fall 2003. His compositions appear on several CDs, including Look In, Jazz at the Rock, Volumes I-IV and in various multimedia productions.
• John did the Lingo programming for Tabla: A Journey into Eastern Percussion, an instructional CD-ROM program exploring rhythmic techniques and form in the classical music of North India, (AIM Records, 2003) and for The Virtual Jury (1997), an online interactive role-playing program based on the circumstances of the Unabomber trial. In 1994, John was assistant sound designer and guitarist for Louis Cat Orze: The Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace (an Interactive Adventure in the Court of Versailles), a CD-ROM program (IVI Publishing, Minneapolis, 1995).

Publications

• In April 2024, eight of his jazz compositions and performances (“Blended Morning,” “Blues in the Wilderness,” “Breezy Hill Melody,” “The Hands of Healing,” “Hold on to That Dream,” “Longevity,” “Mansfield Summer,” and “Meta Blue”) were released on the Unic Magic label under the artist name John Ed Myers, for distribution on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and others.
• “Layers of Inclusion: Arranging Music for Multi-Leveled Ensembles”
  Early College Folio Vol. 1 > Iss. 1 (2021)
• Look In (audio CD, Jungsoul, 2004) features his original jazz compositions and performances on guitar, clarinet, and electronic instruments.
• Way of the Pipa: Structure and Aesthetics in Chinese Lute Music, Kent State University Press (1992).
• Articles in Yinyue Yishu, Soundboard, Jazz Research Papers, College Music Society Newsletter, and other journals.
• Entries for the Asian-American Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, The Fifties in America, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, and many others.