Following the success of his tone poem Titanic, Peter Boyer (Hartt MM '93, DMA '95) is fast-becoming a Titan in the sea of American composers. He is one of only a handful of young American composers to attain his high level of success, as measured by performances of his symphonic works by notable orchestras, significant awards and commissions, and high-profile critical acclaim. A multi-award-winning composer, conductor and scholar, he has now achieved yet another impressive distinction. Boyer has been named to the Smith Hobson Family Chair in Music and appointed chair of the music department at Claremont Graduate University. This appointment makes him one of the youngest people in any discipline in the United States either to hold an endowed professorship or to be named a department chair. Boyer, previously a visiting professor at Claremont since 1996, teaches 20th-century music, American film music and music technology.

Boyer looks back at Hartt fondly, saying, "The high-quality training I received was invaluable preparation for my professional life in music. In particular, the three years I spent under Larry Alan Smith (former dean and professor of composition) and Harold Farberman (professor of conducting), my mentors in composition and conducting, were crucial to my development as a musician." After Hartt, he studied composition in New York with John Corigliano and later completed the Film Scoring Program at the University of Southern California's School of Music in Los Angeles, where he was awarded the Harry Warren Film Scoring Prize.

Interested in the story of the doomed ship since childhood, Boyer composed his tone poem for large orchestra in 1995, nearly three years before James Cameron's film Titanic, sparked a huge resurgence of interest in the lost ship. Boyer "takes a measure of pride in the fact that I composed my work before James Cameron shot a foot of his film, before the Broadway musical hit the stage, before the CBS miniseries, the Memphis exhibition, the slew of new Titanic books, and the interactive CD-ROM."

Boyer's Titanic, written "in memory of the 1,517 lives lost in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912," brought him his fourth and fifth national competition wins, both in a single season (1996-97): the BMI Award for young composers and the First Music Carnegie Hall commission. This was Boyer's second BMI win in a three-year period, and Titanic was the only winning work for full orchestra that year out of over 700 entries.

Boyer's Titanic was premiered by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in February 1997 to an audience of over 2,500 and a standing ovation. Steve Metcalf, music critic at The Hartford Courant, called the work "colorful and meticulously crafted" and said, "Titanic turned out to be a haunting and evocative work, and a tone-poem in the most literal sense." Recently, the Toledo Symphony issued a live recording on its commemorative CD.

In May 1998, Boyer premiered two works within 48 hours of each other. The New York Youth Symphony premiered The Phoenix, a commission awarded through the First Music program and Boyer's fifth national competition win. The New York Times said, "Boyer's work is a tone painting...rich in coloristic effects. The brass and percussion writing was particularly vivid." At the Crossings, written for four brass quartets, premiered in Los Angeles. This work was commissioned by Claremont Graduate University to celebrate both its retiring president and the awarding of the CGU President's Medal to such luminaries as poet and novelist Maya Angelou, sitcom creator Norman Lear, and jazz musician and record producer Quincy Jones.

The Los Angeles-based American Jazz Philharmonic commissioned Boyer in 1997 to compose a work for the inaugural season of its new educational summer program, the Henry Mancini Institute. Boyer conducted the premiere of his work Celebration Overture at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach and subsequently returned to the Mancini Institute as conductor in 1998 and 1999 at Long Beach and at UCLA's Royce Hall.

The widely acclaimed Covenant is one of Boyer's many scores, including several for short festival films. Covenant has played at more than 20 festivals in the United States and Europe, winning nine major awards.

Boyer's current projects include three significant commissions. The first is an orchestral song cycle for renowned baritone Kevin McMillan and the Oregon Mozart Players that will be premiered on November 3, 2000. The second new work has been commissioned by the Conductors Institute at Bard College and will serve as repertoire for the Institute's 40 conductors in the summer of 2000. The third piece, a new orchestral piece, Cornerstones, was commissioned for the Kalamazoo Symphony by Bronson Hospital to celebrate the opening of its new facility. The commission includes both a concert premiere on September 22, 2000, and a multimedia recording (video, text and music) scheduled for September 23.

Even with such titanic accomplishments to his credit, Boyer has much sea ahead to navigate. He stands as a beacon of success for The Hartt School and the University of Hartford.