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Recent News...

Vermont Symphony Orchestra commission for new work entitled Dark Mountains, Jaime Laredo, conductor. Eight performances in 2011-12 season.

Composer of the Year Award for The Book of Goddesses album from the Classical Recording Foundation. Award presented at Carnegie Hall by Christopher Rouse, with performance by MAYA, November 21, 2011. Recording on the AMR label released December 6, 2011.

World premieres of Life is But a Dream and A Dream Within A Dream, commissioned by the Chamber Choir of Europe, Nicol Matt, conductor, 2011.

Fellowship with American Opera Projects Composers & The Voice, working with writer and librettist David Cote, 2011-12

Three Year residency with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, made possible by Meet The Composer and League of American Orchestras through the MTC/LAO Music Alive Program, 2009-12

Composer-In-Residence with the Rocky Ridge Music Center, Summer, 2012.

Upcoming World premiere of A New Eaarth, for orchestra, chorus and narrator, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben narrating. Commissioned by the Vermont Youth Orchestra Choir, Jeffrey Domoto, conductor. Made possible by New Music USA and League of American Orchestras through the "Music Alive!" Program, 2012.

The Book of Goddesses, a new work for the MAYA trio and choreographed dancers, funded in part by NYSCA, 2011.

"Creative powers working on a higher plane" – The Buffalo News

"[Dark Mountains premiered by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra] is richly crafted and tonal, but with knotty contemporary harmonic language and rhythms" - Jim Lowe, Times Argus

“At the beginning of [Embracing the Wind], each instrument inhabits its own distinct sound world... Mr. Paterson gradually alters each line, having each take on characteristics of the others at first, eventually softening the edges to create a tightly knit (if not quite homogenous) dreamlike wash." - Allan Kozinn, The New York Times

“Paterson's music is bright and shiny with a lot of timbral spectacle" - Jay Batzner, Sequenza21

“Vibrantly scored and well crafted… to characterize Paterson’s arrangements, they often seem to shimmer. One is struck by the lustrous quality Paterson evokes…. His is a harmonic language that's very comfortable, evoking glimpses of tonality, but in fleeting fashion as part of an overall palette that encompasses modality, octatonicism, and post-tonal vignettes as well." – Christian Carey, New Music Box

"The two works by the important living American composer Robert Paterson left an especially deep impression, with dynamically, thoroughly worked out clusters and rhythmically sophisticated, interwoven patterns. The audience responded to the performances in the crowded Franciscan church with long, sustained applause and standing ovations." - Gmünder Tagespost

“…appealing new pieces used the classical canon as raw material for personable recombination: Robert Paterson’s Elegy…wistfully adapted material by Bach..." - Steve Smith, The New York Times

"If you like well-crafted and imaginative contemporary music, you will certainly not be disappointed in the Star Crossing CD, which receives my highest recommendation." – Fanfare

"From strident whistles to a siren imitated in a violin glissando to anxious rhythms, [Paterson's Sextet] definitely got its man." – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette