Heiss, John

John Heiss is an active composer, conductor, flutist, and teacher. His works have been performed worldwide, receiving premieres by Speculum Musicae, Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Aeolian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, and Alea III. He has received awards and commissions from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, ASCAP, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His principal publishers are Media Press, Boosey & Hawkes, E.C. Schirmer, and Elkus & Son. Heiss has been principal flute of Boston Musica Viva and has performed with many local ensembles, including the BSO. His articles on contemporary music have appeared in Winds Quarterly, Perspectives of New Music, and The Instrumentalist. Heiss has directed twelve of NEC’s annual festivals, plus visits by many composers including Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Berio, Carter, Messiaen, Schuller, and Tippett. Along with Juilliard faculty Joel Sachs, Heiss has designed and written a book/CD-Rom classical music primer for Blue Marble Music entitled Classical Explorer. Heiss received a B.A. (1960) in mathematics from Lehigh University and a M.F.A (1967) in music from Princeton University. His composition teachers include Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Earl Kim, Otto Luening and Darius Milhaud.