Michael Daugherty
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Rachel L. Miller

Michael Daugherty is the composer-in-residence for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Video

Bach, Beethoven and Brahms didn't make music electronically, neither did Bob Dylan or Bo Diddley. But Michael Daugherty's music is now working its way into the concert repertoire of some of the world's greatest symphony orchestras.

"I usually work late at night, about 10 p.m. to two in the morning is when I tend to work," Daugherty says.

It's not bad for a kid who cut his musical teeth in 1970s, playing keyboards in an Iowa funk rock band.

The man who whimsically calls himself the 'World's Tallest Composer' stands at 6'8", in the company of some real musical giants. He is now the composer-in-residence for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

"One of the reasons to be an artist is to provoke or to challenge, you know," he says. "Otherwise it's boring."

Daugherty's work

"I think that the music of the great composers, music that we like is music that reflects the time, and so the themes I've done, you know, Jackie O or Rosa Parks Boulevard, for example, these have to do with experiences or people that either I knew in some way through the media or through movies or, you know, lived through it," Daugherty says.

It may seem incongruous that his music comes from such disparate sources, while he was certainly influenced by the likes of Chopin, Gershwin and Cole Porter, even James Brown found his way into Daugherty's musical mainstream.

Daugherty

Residency with the Detroit Symphony didn't just happen. There were a lot of years of hard work, a Ph.D. at Yale, composition studies in Paris and Hamburg, and a lot of late nights behind a piano bar pounding out the patrons' favorites just to pay the bills.

"The gig that I remember the most is I played at New Jersey Turnpike Exit 1 Ramada Inn for about three people at the bar all night," Daugherty says.

In addition to his duties with the Symphony, Daugherty is also a professor of composition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Daugherty composing music on his computers.

His latest work pays tribute to the marches of the 1960s and the mother of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks. He calls it Rosa Parks Boulevard, the first of three Detroit-centered works in a symphonic suite entitled MotorCity Triptych.

"I have to make sure that I did it right, that I orchestrated correctly, that I can hear the strings, that this nuance I did was coming through," Daugherty says. "It is a very frightening experience.

"I think I know what it will sound like but you never know for sure. What's interesting about writing for the orchestra is that as much as you think you know what it will sound like, there is always a surprise."

Daugherty with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra

The composer was there in orchestra hall when the symphony gave birth to his musical child, a gift to a new generation from a modern composer's heart.

"It is a big thrill and, of course, for a composer, I think the concert is when I can sit back and enjoy the first time."

Click here for more information on Daugherty and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

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