Background
Webster Young was born and raised in New York.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Webster Young
Edit ProfileEducation
Browning School for Boys, grad. 1964; Deerfield Academy, grad 1968; U C Berkeley 1968-70 Hon. withdrawal; St Justin's Theological Seminary, in residence; U C Davis 1974-77 BA Music, 1976, MA in Music program, 1977 Hon. withdrawal; Alliance Francaise, Paris, French studies 1977; Juilliard School extension studies 1978-79; Aspen Music Festival and School 1980, 1982, composition studies; Manhattan School of Music 1980-81, composition studies.
Career
Webster A. Young is a composer of symphonies, ballets, and operas. He was the most prolific composer for ballet in the US in the 1980s, before Martins-Torke, working with Eric Hyrst, formerly of the Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, New York City Ballet, and the Royal Ballet of England. Young appears with Eric Hyrst in the film "Two for Ballet", available from Cinema Guild, NY. "Two for Ballet" was seen on 63 PBS stations nationwide in 1992. The Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at Lincoln Center, NY, has an extensive file on Eric Hyrst's career that also includes videos of the first three Hyrst-Young ballets. Young became the artistic director of the Long Island Opera Company 1998-2003. Young was the first composer in many decades to set Shakespeare's "As You Like It" to music as an opera in four acts. Soprano, tenor and baritone operas from it are published at MusicNotes.com, and several performances are in videos at Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Youku, and Toudou.com Now on his Opus 170. Recent works include 20 tangos and 10 salsa pieces for orchestra, also arranged for piano. Opera arias and piano music published at MusicNotes.com Young studied composition with Richard Swift, Andrew Frank, Giampaolo Bracali, and notably with Charles Jones - who was acquainted with Stravinsky and a close friend of Darius Milhaud. Young is related through his grandmother, Seena Harbach Purdy, to Otto Harbach, the Broadway lyricist, and playwright, who was his great uncle. Otto Harbach's oldest brother, Adolphe, Webster Young's great grandfather, was a band conductor. Young's paternal grandfather, Owen Young, was a semi-professional watercolor landscape painter, of whose works a few hundred paintings are extant. Webster Young is the author of three books: The Palaces of Music (2017), The Naked Composer (2012), and The Little Flowers of the Desert Brothers (2017), all published at Amazon.com under his name.
Works
Other Work
Connections
Young is related to Otto Harbach, Broadway lyricist.
