Osborne William

William Osborne was born 1951 in Deming, N.M., the grandson of homesteading cotton farmers.  He studied with George Crumb for five years in Philadelphia and New York, and with Franco Donatoni for two in Rome.     He has received two ASCAP awards, a Doctoral Fellowship to Columbia University, alternate to the American Rome Prize, and a major prize from the Theater Commission of the City of Munich for his Beckett productions. He founded The Wasteland Company in 1984 along with his wife Abbie Conant as the main performer to explore women's roles in music theater. 

Two doctoral dissertations have been written about William and Abbie's music theater and multimedia work.  Dr. Jesús Fernando Lloret González, a professor at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Málaga completed his dissertation about our music theater and multimedia work in 2012. It is entitled, “Fusión del Teatro Y La Ópera a Través de Los Medios Audiovisuales: La Trombonista Abbie Conant Y El Compositor William Osborne.” (“The Fusion of Theater and Opera Through Audiovisual Media In the Work of William Osborne and Abbie Conant.”) He was given the highest distinction, cum laudem, for his work. The degree was awarded by the Faculty of Cinema and Communications at the University of Málaga. 

And in 2013, Dr. Jessica D. Butler completed her dissertation about our music theater work and was awarded a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree by the University of Iowa. Her dissertation is entitled “The Creative Identity of Women: An Analysis of Feminist Themes in Select Chamber Music Theater Works by Composer William Osborne for Trombonist Abbie Conant.” 

In recent years William and Abbie have toured to over 165 cities in America and Europe to great critical acclaim with his compositions.  Their European venues have included the Munich Biennale, The Stuttgarter Tage für Neue Musik, The Hamburg State Opera, The Bavarian State Opera, The Freiburg Theater Festival, The State Theater of Kassel, Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm, Munich’s Gasteig Cultrual Center, and Nuovo Forme Sonare in Rome. They have performed and given workshops at most of America’s major music schools including The Juilliard School, The New England Conservatory, Yale University, The Eastman School of Music, The Peabody Conservatory, Indiana University, The San Francisco Conservatory, Cal Arts, the University of California at Berkley, Ithaca College, and the University of Northern Texas.

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