Betty Freeman, one of the most influential individual patrons of contemporary composers over the last 40 years, and long the keeper of a famously gracious musical salon in Los Angeles, died on Saturday at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 87.
The philanthropist Betty Freeman in 1997 at her home in Beverly Hills with the Hockney painting of her in the background. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her daughter Shelley Butler.
At a time when grants to composers are routinely processed through arts panels and advisory committees, Ms. Freeman was a throwback to an earlier era of patronage based on personal preferences. The composer John Adams, who dedicated his opera Nixon in China to Ms. Freeman, has long called her a modern-day Medici.
Her selection of composers was purely arbitrary and based solely on my response to their music, Ms. Freeman said in a 1998 interview in The New York Times. And her taste in contemporary music was wide-ranging.
She commissioned the French 12-tone master Pierre Boulez and the American maverick John Cage, the British modernist Harrison Birtwistle and the American minimalist Steve Reich. Mr. Reichs Different Trains, written for the Kronos Quartet; Kaija Saariahos opera LAmour de Loin, which had its premiere at the Salzburg Festival; Tod Machovers Hyper-Violin Concerto, for the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group; and Lou Harrisons Piano Concerto, composed for Keith Jarrett, are among the hundreds of notable works Ms. Freeman commissioned from about 80 composers. She also underwrote performances and recordings.
In 1964 she met Harry Partch, the eclectic American composer and inventor of unconventional instruments, who, struggling to subsist, was nearly destitute. Ms. Freeman housed him and provided support for his work until his death in 1974. That she could tune in on this guy who was virtually a hobo, Mr. Adams said in the 1998 Times article, see the value of his work and put up with his crusty, abusive behavior for 10 years until he died is amazing.
It was through her financing of a 1973 film about Partch, The Dreamer That Remains, that Ms. Freeman inadvertently started her career as a photographer. When no one from the film crew was available to take still shots, someone thrust a camera into her hands. I had a knack for taking portraits, she said in the Times interview. I later attended some workshops given by Ansel Adams and Cole Weston, but essentially I learned by doing. A camera is like a golf club: this inert thing until you use it. Many of Ms. Freemans portraits have been published. Some can be seen on display in the lobby of Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall.
The philanthropist Betty Freeman in 1997 at her home in Beverly Hills with the Hockney painting of her in the background. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her daughter Shelley Butler.
At a time when grants to composers are routinely processed through arts panels and advisory committees, Ms. Freeman was a throwback to an earlier era of patronage based on personal preferences. The composer John Adams, who dedicated his opera Nixon in China to Ms. Freeman, has long called her a modern-day Medici.
Her selection of composers was purely arbitrary and based solely on my response to their music, Ms. Freeman said in a 1998 interview in The New York Times. And her taste in contemporary music was wide-ranging.
She commissioned the French 12-tone master Pierre Boulez and the American maverick John Cage, the British modernist Harrison Birtwistle and the American minimalist Steve Reich. Mr. Reichs Different Trains, written for the Kronos Quartet; Kaija Saariahos opera LAmour de Loin, which had its premiere at the Salzburg Festival; Tod Machovers Hyper-Violin Concerto, for the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group; and Lou Harrisons Piano Concerto, composed for Keith Jarrett, are among the hundreds of notable works Ms. Freeman commissioned from about 80 composers. She also underwrote performances and recordings.
In 1964 she met Harry Partch, the eclectic American composer and inventor of unconventional instruments, who, struggling to subsist, was nearly destitute. Ms. Freeman housed him and provided support for his work until his death in 1974. That she could tune in on this guy who was virtually a hobo, Mr. Adams said in the 1998 Times article, see the value of his work and put up with his crusty, abusive behavior for 10 years until he died is amazing.
It was through her financing of a 1973 film about Partch, The Dreamer That Remains, that Ms. Freeman inadvertently started her career as a photographer. When no one from the film crew was available to take still shots, someone thrust a camera into her hands. I had a knack for taking portraits, she said in the Times interview. I later attended some workshops given by Ansel Adams and Cole Weston, but essentially I learned by doing. A camera is like a golf club: this inert thing until you use it. Many of Ms. Freemans portraits have been published. Some can be seen on display in the lobby of Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall.
