Fellowships:
DAAD Fellow (Berlin, Germany 1995–96),
Music OMI Fellow (Omi, New York, 1997)
Civitella Ranieri Fellow (Umbertide, Italy 2001).
Grants/Commissions:
Meet the Composer, Composer Performance Grants (1979-1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, 2000, 2005)
Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund (1997)
Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities (1988)
Mary Flagler Cary Trust (1990)
Brooklyn Philharmonic (1989)
National Endowment for the Arts, Music Theater Program (1987)
New York Foundation for the Arts, Composer Fellowship (1987)
Honors:
2006 ALPERT AWARD IN MUSIC
Ambassador of Music Award (2003 Lunar New Year Festival Committee, New York, NY)
Association for Independent Music Award (Best Mainstream Jazz Recording of 2002” for his contribution to “Vietnam- the Aftermath”.)
German Critics Recording Award (1987 for “nine below zero” by Horvitz-Morris-Previte)
“Boris Vian Award” (1980 for “Europe-America Big Band,” France)
Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris (February 10, 1947 – January 29, 2013) was an American cornetist, composer, and conductor. He is best known for pioneering the structural improvisation method known as Conduction®, which he utilized in many recordings and performances. Morris was born in Long Beach, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. He began playing cornet in elementary school and later studied at the University of Southern California. In the 1960s, he became involved in the free jazz scene in Los Angeles, playing with musicians such as Horace Tapscott and Billy Higgins.
Morris moved to the Bay Area for its small but exemplary community that included musicians Charles Moffett, Charles Tyler, Frank Lowe, Ray Anderson, Curtis Clark, and writers Ntozake Shange and Allan Graubard. He also studied cornet and composition with Little Benny Harris and conducting with Jackie Hairston.
In 1976, Morris moved to New York City, where several of his collaborators had established themselves, and reunited with David Murray, Frank Lowe and Charles Tyler.
He continued to perform and compose and began to develop his ideas for Conduction, a method of improvisational music that combines elements of composition, improvisation, and conducting. In Conduction, the conductor provides the musicians with a set of instructions, or "conductions®," which they then use to create and refine music in real time.
Morris led many ensembles throughout his career, including the Conduction® Orchestra and the SLANG Orchestra. He also recorded numerous albums as a leader and sideman, and composed music for film and television. Morris's music has been praised for its innovative use of improvisation and its ability to create a sense of community and shared experience among musicians and listeners. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of jazz and improvised music.
Morris and Lowe toured Europe, introducing Morris to an international milieu that marks him to this day. He settled in Paris, then the South of France, and taught Conduction® workshops in Holland and in Belgium at the Conservatory Royal in Liege Belgium. It was in these musical environments that Morris further developed his distinctive ensemble structures and frameworks that range from solo to large ensemble performance. Although Morris often returned to New York to collaborate with writers, visual artists, dancers and musicians on multi-disciplinary projects, it was not until 1981 that he relocated to Manhattan. Since then, he has steadily broadened his musical circles while breaking new ground.
In 1985, Morris began his Conduction® series, where he numbers each performance that engages musicians in the art of Conduction®. As Morris has defined it: “Conduction® (conducted improvisation/interpretation) is a vocabulary of ideographic signs and gestures activated to modify or construct a real-time musical arrangement or composition. Each sign and gesture transmits generative information for interpretation, and provides instantaneous possibilities for altering or initiating harmony, melody, rhythm, articulation, phrasing or form.”
Since 1985, He has preformed in 199 Conductions®, Morris has refined a unique concept in music – He is represented on over 200 recordings either as composer, cornetist, conductor, arranger or producer. He express an astonishing range of accomplishment that encompasses improvisatory and interpretive musical cultures worldwide. For example, his 10-CD Box set “Testament: A Conduction Collection” (New World Records, 1995) features Conductions performed in nine different cultural situations, and his double CD “Holy Sea” (Splasc(h), 1999) incorporates symphonic musicians and live electronics. Include his work with saxophonists Frank Lowe and David Murray, vocalists Caetano Veloso and Cassandra Wilson, the Orchestra della Toscana and his own ensembles:, New York, Tokyo, and Berlin Skyscraper.
International recognition of Morris’ oeuvre signals its importance to modern music at large. He has been a fellow of the DAAD, Berlin, Germany, and Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy. He has received commissions from the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, to name just a few, and has been Composer in Residence for over 30 international institutions, including Tufts University (Medford, MA), Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut) and Istanbul Bilgi University (Istanbul, Turkey). His collaborations with numerous artists of distinction have earned him critical acclaim and the respect of his peers – He was nomination for “Composer of the Year” in 1999 (Bell Atlantic Corp. Jazz Awards). His activities and influence are not limited to the music community: in addition to collaborating with musicians such as Alice Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, he has worked with leading theater and film directors and performing ensembles – Christoph Marthaler, the Wooster Group, Avery Brooks, Robert Altman; choreographers – Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno; visual artists – David Hammons and A.R. Penck; and writers – Allan Graubard, Sekou Sundiata, Ntozake Shange.
Conduction® a definitive statement on the art, Morris is Musical Director of “New York Skyscraper”, (a 32-piece orchestra) “Folding Space”, (an 11-piece ensemble that performs Morris’ vocal music of choice) and is the founder of theNew Music Observatory, a nomadic laboratory designed for the study of Conduction® and sonic expression.