Patrick F Beckman

Patrick F. Beckman grew up in Elgin, IL and currently lives in Freeport, IL. He received his Bachelor of Music and Masters of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana. While there he studied with Soulima Stravinsky (Igor Stravinsky’s son), Kenneth Drake, Ron Elliston, Claire Richards and Diane Sanders. During college he was busy composing musicals and touring Europe as an accompanist.

After college he became Artist-in-Residence of Highland College in Freeport, IL. He stayed at Highland College to teach and went on to become the Chairman of the Department of Music. More recently he taught at Aquin High School in Freeport, IL and has been invited to play with the University of Wisconsin Orchestra or play solo recitals there.

Mr. Beckman has been composing piano and vocal music since college and has created numerous works in both areas, which have been performed in the Midwest and Europe either by himself as a soloist or with various choral groups.

In 2000, Mr. Beckman was selected as the composer to represent Illinois and write a work for “massed choirs” from the Freeport area as part of “Continental Harmony- Music for the Millennium” by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). For this piece he collaborated with the poet and dairy farmer Daniel Smith to create a new work, “Song of the Earth” which depicts an image of life in our daily world. Beckman’s musical setting of the poetry reflects the rich diversity of American music as we enter the new Millennium. Elements of gospel, jazz, and rhythm and blues, sung by an ensemble of 300 voices, combined with the antecedents of European musical heritage to create a uniquely American voice. Following its completion he took the Highland Chorale to Europe and presented “Song of the Earth,” as well as three smaller choral works.

In addition to numerous choral compositions, he has also written extensively for piano. His works for the piano consist of a synthesis of our American musical vocabularies combined with a fusion of older European structural models with an emphasis on both rhythmic and melodic development that the listener can follow. He is able to utilize the language of the blues, jazz, gospel, folk, rhythm and blues and rock in larger forms geared to the modern listener.

He has received critical acclaim for a number of his CDs some of which include: “Street Dance (MMC Recordings), and “Big Muddy Suite”, (a suite for clarinet and piano with Grammy award winner Richard Stoltzman).

Using the musical languages of our time, Beckman’s music is both accessible and challenging. He has also recorded for the Contemporary Music Society of Philadelphia his first piano sonata, Con Brio Recordings (American Scenes Vol.1; American Scenes Vol.11) and smaller labels in the Midwest, His chorale works include the “Mass in Memory of Thomas Merton”- 1st performed at the Salzburg Cathedral and the “Easter Mass”- 1st performed at the Vatican.

In addition to his academic and off-campus activities, he also performed with various R&B groups from Chicago and worked as a studio musician in various studios.