Laurie MacGregor has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, the musical theatre, and children’s chorus. Her concert music has been performed in the U.S. and abroad, and recorded on CDs and vinyl by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the Hampshire String Quartet, the Odyssey Trio, and the Baxter-Ghezzi Duo. Honors include a Norlin Foundation Fellowship, grants from Meet the Composer, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. She has held composer residencies and taught music and theatre in elementary, middle, and high schools. Laurie’s music is distinguished by her lyrical melodies, syncopated rhythms, sophisticated chord structures, and the ability to write in many musical styles. A resident of Hanover, NH, she and her husband Kurt Feuer have two grown children.
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Laurie with composers William Schuman, Aaron Copland, David Del Tredici, and Norlin Corporation president Norton Stevens
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Laurie spent her childhood in Wayzata, Minnesota and Washington, DC. The daughter of music lovers, she was exposed to all kinds of music, both live and recorded, and was as much influenced by Tubby the Tuba, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and any Motown or Beatles tune as by Mozart and Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, and composers of musical theatre. She began playing the piano in second grade and started writing music in high school. Laurie attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she met and studied with her mentor, composer Meyer Kupferman. She also worked with composer Jon Appleton at Dartmouth College and received her Master's Degree in Composition from Columbia University.
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Laurie wrote chamber and orchestral music exclusively, including three compositions premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall, until she was commissioned to write a musical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden with author Rosellen Brown for Andy’s Summer Playhouse, a New Hampshire children’s theatre. Energized by working in a theatre community and writing for children’s voices, she became a member of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York City. She went on to compose another musical for Andy’s, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches with lyrics by Maggie Bloomfield and book by Dan Hurlin.
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Conducting a section of a 650-children chorus
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Rehearsing - singing and juggling
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Inspired and motivated by children and their unique energy, and by children’s literature in general, Laurie began her next project—the song cycle Hailstones and Halibut Bones, an adaptation of Mary O’Neill’s book of color poems, composed for a professional ensemble of jazz and classical musician friends and the entire student body of the elementary school her children attended. Collaboration with the school’s teachers resulted in an integrated curriculum, culminating in the premiere performance with 480 student singers accompanied by twelve adult musicians.
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Drawn to large-scale school productions because of their potential for collaboration and the sense of community they foster, Laurie proceeded to compose the song cycle The Dragons Are Singing Tonight, an adaptation of Jack Prelutsky’s book of poems about dragons. Once again, Laurie combined child singers with adult musicians. Her composition was written for and premiered by a specific school community of children and a large professional ensemble of musician friends.
Subsequent school and children’s theatre performances of Hailstones and Halibut Bones and The Dragons Are Singing Tonight have featured as few as 65 and as many as 650 children. Future productions of The Dragons Are Singing Tonight include a 2010 school production in Massachusetts and a 2012 theatrical production in Minnesota.
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Singing with kids
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| Photos by John Ragonese, Nancy Gibson, Medora Hebert, and Donna Butler |
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