King of Prussia, PA – Theodore Presser Company now makes available the study score for Dan Welcher’s most enduring and frequently played orchestral work, Prairie Light: Three Texas Watercolors of Georgia O’Keeffe (466-00061 — Study Score — $40.00). This work for full orchestra is a fascinating musical companion to three of Georgia O’Keeffe’s most unusual paintings, Light Coming on the Plains, Canyon with Crows, and Starlight Night. Ideal for performances using visual projections of the paintings, this piece is frequently programmed for subscription concerts as well as in educational settings. Parts are available on rental from Theodore Presser Company.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1948, composer-conductor Dan Welcher has been called “one of the most promising American composers I have ever heard” by critic Royal S. Brown in High Fidelity, 1974. fulfilling that promise ever since, gradually creating a body of compositions in almost every imaginable genre including opera, concerto, symphony, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chamber music. With over one hundred works to his credit, Welcher is one of the most-played composers of his generation. Dan Welcher first trained as a pianist and bassoonist, earning degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He joined the Louisville Orchestra as its Principal Bassoonist in 1972, and remained there until 1978, concurrently teaching composition and theory at the University of Louisville. Welcher now holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the School of Music at UT/Austin, teaching Composition and serving as Director of the New Music Ensemble. He has won numerous awards and prizes from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation (a Fellowship in 1997), National Endowment for the Arts, The Reader's Digest/Lila Wallace Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Ligurian Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. His orchestral music has been performed by more than fifty orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony. He lives in Bastrop, Texas, and travels widely to conduct and to teach. To learn more, visit our Composer Gallery.

Offering music by today’s greatest composers and teachers, Theodore Presser Company is the leader in publishing educational and recital music. Theodore Presser Company is a full-range music publisher and distributes the music of over 30 publishers from around the globe, with a combined sales catalog that features over 60,000 available works. For more information about new publications from Theodore Presser Company or to locate a dealer near you, log on to www.presser.com or e-mail us at sales@presser.com. For review copies of the publication listed in this release, please contact Heidi Vanderlee at (212) 777-0900, ext. 230 or send an e-mail to hvanderlee@presser.com.