American composing icon Ned Rorem turned 85 Thursday. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, where, unsurprisingly, Ned''s birthday wasn't exactly headline news. Yet, sadly, New York didn't pay all that much attention, either. A single concert tonight (Friday, Oct. 24) on the Upper West Side - at the Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy - marked this landmark anniversary for one of America's most important composers. I was unable to be there, but was honored to contribute to a festschrift that was to be given to Ned at the conclusion of the concert. (A festschrift is a volume of tributes written by friends, associates, students, etc.) Ned's No. 1 Student and heir apparent, Daron Hagen, was kind enough to ask me for a few lines, as I was one of Ned's students at Florida's Atlantic Center for the Arts way back in 1984, when the world was indeed much, much younger. I wrote this:

"The first piece of Ned’s I ever heard was Lions, which shook me to the core. I hadn’t known music could reach down that deep. Later, Donald Gramm’s recording of Ned’s early songs consoled me when someone I loved turned out to be a fraud. I hadn’t known before that music could be so personal without being sentimental. Finally, in 1984, there was the miracle of studying with Ned at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Daron Hagen, Bill Coble, and others. Ned would give each of us a poem in the afternoon and expect it to be set to music by the following morning. No one slept. When we brought our songs to him, Ned would throw them on the piano rack and sing and play them at sight, making comments along the way. 'This is strong,' he’d say, pointing to a certain passage, or 'This is weak.' And he was right, every time. Once, after reading my setting of a Hopkins poem, Ned said simply to me, 'You are a composer.' It was the greatest gift I'd ever been given. Thank you, Ned."

- KLF