Harold Boatrite

Harold Boatrite (April 2, 1932 – April 26, 2021) was an American composer. After early studies with Stanley Hollingsworth, Harold Boatrite was awarded a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center where he studied composition with Lukas Foss and took part in the orchestration seminars of Aaron Copland. In 1961 he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to be composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival. He received an honorary doctorate in 1967 from the Combs College of Music and was subsequently appointed to the faculty of Haverford College, where he taught theory and composition until 1980. During that time ( 1974 to 1977 ) he served on the music panel of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In honor of his fiftieth birthday in 1982, a series of concerts devoted exclusively to his music were presented by the Pennsylvania Alliance for American Music. Among the participants in the series were the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Thomas Jefferson University Choir and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. Boatrite has written in a wide variety of media ranging from solo and chamber pieces to large-scale choral and orchestral works. His music has been heard throughout the United States