Colin McPhee : Composer in Two Worlds
Carol J. Oja
University of Illinois Press, 200, 353 pp.

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I must admit that when I first read this recent biography of Montreal-born musician and author Colin McPhee (1900 –1964), I was surprised to find out that he was Canadian. McPhee's musical contributions have never really been recognized in Canada and are typically associated with other post WWI– America composers such as Aaron Copland, Carlos Chavez, Henry Cowell, and Virgil Thomson. Similar to Copland, McPhee was considered an extremely valuable member of the American experimental school, whose compositions had a profound influence on minimal composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley. Author Carol Oja aptly entitles her biography Colin McPhee : Composer in Two Worlds. It offers an overdue glimpse into McPhee's fascinating life, painting him as a talented composer and pianist, as well as a thoughtful writer and musicologist. Oja describes him as an ambitious boy growing up in Canada, eventually moving to Baltimore to pursue his music studies, and finally establishing himself as a noted composer in New York City. She does a fine job describing all aspects of his life and includes a fair amount of analytical detail of such compositions as Arm, Canadian ! March to Glory !, Concerto for Piano with Wind Octet, Sea Shanty Suite, Kinesis, and Tabuh-Tabuhan. Oja speculates on McPhee's apparent rejection of Western compositional styles and maps his tumultuous 35-year effort of writing his treatise on Gamelan music, which is entitled Music of Bali (1956), and which posthumously established him as the world authority on Balinese music. This biography is highly recommended. Michael Vincent

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