Wendell Logan

1940 - 2010

About

Wendell Logan (1940-2010), born in Thomson, Georgia, was a composer of jazz and concert music who more than two decades ago founded the jazz department at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. His first musical studies were with his father, an amateur alto saxophonist. He attended Florida A&M University, a historically black institution, on a football scholarship, graduating in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in music. He earned a master’s in music from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 1964 and a Ph.D. in music theory and composition from the University of Iowa in 1968.Before joining the Oberlin faculty, Professor Logan taught at Florida A&M, Ball State and Western Illinois Universities. Professor Logan, who played soprano saxophone and trumpet, joined the faculty in 1973 and began offering jazz classes soon afterward. But it was not until 1989 that he was able to make jazz studies a full-fledged major, in which students can earn a bachelor of music. Besides composing many jazz works, Professor Logan wrote concert music. Among his best-known concert works are “Doxology Opera: The Doxy Canticles” (2001), a gritty sung drama of race and morality with a libretto by Paul Carter Harrison, and “Runagate, Runagate” (1989), a setting of Robert E. Hayden’s poem about a fugitive slave. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991; Orion and other labels have recorded his music.

Related Information

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/music/23logan.html

Works by Wendell Logan