Bio:
Composer John Beall was born in Belton, Texas, in 1942. He studied composition at Baylor University with Charles Eakin and Richard Willis completing his studies there with a master's degree in 1966. During the years 1971-73 Beall completed doctoral study at the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Samuel Adler. In 1972 he received the Louis Lane Prize for his orchestral work, Lament for Those Lost in the War, and in 1973, the Howard Hanson Prize for his Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra. Since 1978 Dr. Beall has been Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence at West Virginia University. Summers from 1992 to 2004 have been spent teaching at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan where he chaired the program in theory and composition from 1998 until 2004. He was named Coordinator of Composition for North Carolina's Brevard Music Center summer program in 2005.

Beall taught at Southwest Texas State University and Eastern Illinois University before his appointment at West Virginia. He has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts (two awards), several universities, the West Virginia Music Teachers Association (Composer of the Year, 1981), Radiological Consultants Association of West Virginia, and the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra (two awards). Performances have come from the Dallas, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia Symphonies, the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh, chamber organizations such as the Interlochen Faculty Players, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Claremont Quintet, Laureate Wind Quintet, Rutgers Wind Quintet, Georgia Wind Quintet, Savannah Wind Quintet, Aeolian Chamber Players, and various university ensembles and professional soloists.

In 1985 John Beall completed his Symphony No. 1 while a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy, and at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. The work was premiered by the West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra under Rachael Worby in 1986. In 1990 he was named Benedum Distinguished Scholar for the Arts and Humanities by West Virginia University. He is an annual winner of Serious Music Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). December, 1991, saw the premiere at WVU of Mr. Beall's Anglican Mass, for large choir, soloists, organ and orchestra, his largest work to that date. In 1995 he was named to a Fellowship in Music Composition by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in collaboration with the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. In the fall of 1997 his first opera, Ethan Frome, to a libretto by Jack Held adapted from Edith Wharton's novel of the same name, was premiered as a part of the centennial of the School of Music at West Virginia University. In 1998 a television production of the same opera was given its broadcast premiere over statewide public television. Also in 1998 came the premiere of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra for violinist Stephen Beall. New works since then have included Breakers, for Flute and Piano (1999), Wondrous Love: Variations for Viola and Piano (1999), Terra Firma, Trio for Flute, Violoncello, and Piano (1998-00), and String Quartet No. 2, "The River", (2000 -2001). Premiered in 2003 were the Symphony No. 2, "Spruce Knob," a commissioned work for the opening of the Clay Center for the Arts, new home of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, in Charleston, Raven Rock, for the Baylor Symphony Orchestra at Baylor University, and an orchestral suite drawn from the opera, Ethan Frome, for the Detroit Civic Orchestra. The summer of 2004 saw the premiere of the Sonata for Viola and Piano commissioned (and performed) by Pittsburgh Symphony Viola Principal, Randolph Kelly. Coming up in the spring of 2007 will be the premiere of the Double Concerto for Violin and Contrabass with the United States Marine Chamber Orchestra.

His compositions enjoy a growing success throughout the United States, and Western Europe. There are three compact discs of his music available: two released by Cambria Master Recordings, and one two-CD box released by the West Virginia University Press. (See the Recordings page of this website.) .His music is published by MMB Music, Inc., Carl Fischer, and Southern Music Co. He is a member of ASCAP, MTNA, SCI (Region III), and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. His strengths as a composer are the humanistic warmth -- drama and lyricism -- of his musical language, and the technical craft with which he applies it. His style is rather independent, while drawing both on recent contemporary developments and American folk elements.

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