Phillip Ramey

Who is Phillip Ramey?

Phillip Ramey is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music.

He studied composition with the Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin from 1959 to 1962, first at the International Academy of Music in Nice, France, then at DePaul University in Chicago. He later studied composition with Jack Beeson at Columbia University. Ramey has had professional associations with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, William Schuman, David Diamond and Vladimir Horowitz. For many years, he was a close friend and a neighbor of Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco. Virgil Thomson honored him with a musical portrait for piano titled "Phillip Ramey: Thinking Hard"; it has been recorded by pianists Jacquelyn Helin and Bennett Lerner, and is analyzed in Anthony Tommasini's book Virgil Thomson's Musical Portraits.

Ramey is the composer of orchestral works including three piano concertos, chamber music, and many works for solo piano, among them nine sonatas. In 1993 his Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate its 150th Anniversary, was premiered by that orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, with Philip Myers as soloist.