Phillip Ramey

Phillip Ramey (born September 12, 1939) is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music. Ramey was born in Elmhurst, Illinois. 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 (1962–65). He had professional associations with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, William Schuman, David Diamond and Vladimir Horowitz. Thomson honored him with a musical portrait for piano titled “Phillip Ramey: Thinking Hard”, and Copland dedicated two piano pieces to him: “Midsummer Nocturne” and “Proclamation”. For many years, Ramey was a close friend and a neighbor of Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco, where he has summered regularly. In 2017, the New York Public Library acquired Ramey’s archive of manuscripts, scores and recordings of his music, which will be catalogued and made available for scholarly research. Ramey is the composer of orchestral works, including three piano concertos, along with chamber music and many works for solo piano, among them ten so