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Roger Lee Hall

Roger Lee Hall (b. 1942, Glen Ridge, New Jersey) is an American composer and music preservationist.

Personal

He grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1960, where he was already involved with music. He began his music career as a songwriter during the 1960s, and received his B.A. in music theory and composition from Rutgers University in 1970. His M.A. degree was awarded from Binghamton University in New York ethnomusicology in 1972. He did his Ph.D. studies at Case Western Reserve University. During his early college years, he composed his first music compositions: two sets of piano variations, a percussion quartet, and haiku songs based on his own poems.. In 1977 he moved to Massachusetts where he was a music instructor at Stonehill College and Brookline Adult and Community Education, where he taught many courses in classical and popular music. Also, he has been a film music critic and the editor of an online magazine, Film Music Review, and a lecturer and consultant on various topics in American music.

Work

As a longtime music preservationist, Hall has helped to preserve New England music, Shaker music, and other music. He has written over twenty-five publications, including music guides on Christmas music in America, George Gershwin, Shaker music, Film music, and Old-time radio. In addition, he has written several memoirs about his songwriting years and his meeting with cowboy movie star, Hopalong Cassidy, and he has written a series of multi-media books with audio and video illustrations. In 1971, be began studying Shaker music and has become an authority on the subject. He compiled and edited over 50 Shaker songs and hymns for a national magazine on Shaker culture and has edited and arranged over one hundred Shaker spirituals and published many of them in music collections and on CDs.

He has written over 100 compositions, mostly for chorus and small ensembles. Among his most performed works are: “Gentle Words” and “Love is Little,” two Shaker humility songs; “Peace,” an anti-war song based on an 1814 poem by a teenage girl; and “Creator God, We Give You Thanks,” an environmental anthem which received an award in a choral competition in 1993. His composition, “A Gift Song,” was performed during a concert tour of Sharing A New Song from Boston, Massachusetts when they traveled to Russia in 1988, where the song was sung in Russian and well received by the audiences there. During the 1970s and 1980s, Roger Lee Hall was Vice-President, Historian and Conductor of the Old Stoughton Musical Society, the oldest choral society in the U.S. He has published several monographs and music collections about this choral society. With his interest in community music, he has produced and hosted several cable television series, “IN CONCERT” and “NOW AND THEN.” He has been a frequent guest on radio programs and hosted his own radio program, “IN THE MOOD,” playing music of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In 2006, he became the moderator of an extensive site devoted to preservation of American music. He is also Director of the American Music Recordings Collection (AMRC), a large archive of vintage recordings, and Director of the New England Music Archive {NEMA). Roger Lee Hall has been listed in various directories, including International Who’s Who in Music, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.

References

Roger Lee Hall – http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/biography.htm

Binghamton University Magazine, Spring 2009 - http://www2.binghamton.edu/alumni/news/class-notes/spring-2009.html

Classical Composers Database - http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/hall_roger

Composer of 1814 peace poem – http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/PeacePoem1814.htm

The Sound of Film Music and Sammy Movie Music Awards - http://www.wickedlocal.com/stoughton/fun/entertainment/arts/x673426983/Stoughton-man-alive-with-the-sound-of-film-music

Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin: Joseph Brackett’s “Simple Gifts” - http://www.american-music.org/publications/bullarchive/hall233.htm