Composers

Moshe Cotel thought he was leaving music behind when he forsook a successful career as a composer and high-ranking conservatory professor in order, in his mid-50s, to become a rabbi. Fate, however, turned out to be not entirely on board with the plan. As he finished his studies, Cotel proposed, out of laziness, to perform a rabbinical thesis rather than write one. So he was permitted to give a piano recital in which he paired traditional rabbinical monologues with pieces of classical music.

Music composer Garry Schyman sits in his Culver City studio, at a desk topped with Gustav Mahler biographies and Krzysztof Penderecki recordings, and ponders the hero's predicament. He pivots to his keyboard and plays a handful of chords conveying utter loss, the draining of hope. If you happen to play the video game Resistance: Retribution after it's released next spring, you'll take on the role of a British soldier working to subvert an alien invasion in post-apocalyptic Europe.

Stephen Sondheim will write some of the music for the New York Public Theater's production of "King Lear," starring Kevin Kline as Shakespeare's tormented monarch. Sondheim, composer of such landmark musicals as "Sweeney Todd," "Follies" and "Company," will share the revival's music credit with Michael Starobin, best known in the theater as an orchestrator. Starobin has done the orchestrations for more than a dozen Broadway shows, including Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park With George."

Country songwriter Darrell "Wayne" Perry made his fortune with hits such as Lorrie Morgan's "What Part of No" and Tim McGraw's "Not a Moment Too Soon." Now, nearly two years after his death, a dispute over his estate is unfolding like a heartbreaking country ballad. Perry's children have accused their evangelist aunt of persuading him to decline medical care in favor of prayer for the throat cancer that killed him.

John Adams will be 60 on Feb. 15. Although most days something by Adams is being performed somewhere, the calendar of upcoming concerts posted on the website of his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, is blank for his birthday. That doesn't mean that America's most performed contemporary classical composer is being overlooked. On Sunday, Adams begins a short residency with the London Symphony Orchestra, which will include a European tour. A birthday festival, Feb.

Composer John Adams has delayed the premiere of his "Doctor Atomic Symphony," which is based on his critically acclaimed opera about the development of the A-bomb. The symphony, commissioned by the Saint Louis Symphony, Carnegie Hall and the BBC, was to be performed March 31 at Carnegie Hall. It will be replaced by Adams' "Harmonielehre" at the concert with conductor David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony.

FOR the film version of "Dreamgirls," the musical's composer, Henry Krieger, along with producers the Underdogs -- Harvey Mason Jr. and Damon Thomas -- added four songs to the original lineup. Last week he was at his New York apartment talking to director Bill Condon about the Oscars but hung out long enough to answer a few questions. Only three of the four new songs you wrote for the "Dreamgirls" movie were nominated for an Oscar. Are you terribly disappointed? I know! I'm so upset!

British composer Brian Ferneyhough has won the International Ernst von Siemens music prize, one of the most prestigious awards in classical music. Ferneyhough, who has taught composition at Stanford University since 2000, will receive the honor and its cash award of about $259,000 on May 3 in Munich. Ferneyhough, 64, who was born in Coventry, is regarded as a leader in the advanced 12-tone style -- technically demanding for musicians.

COMPOSERS quite often pull frayed scores out of their desk drawers, but for Lou Harrison, tinkering with his opera "Young Caesar" was a four-decade journey that continued even after he died.

TONIGHT, the Italian composer Ennio Morricone will receive an honorary Oscar. The Internet Movie Database lists 504 films and television shows that he has scored (and two more that have been announced). Among the well over 400 features, five of those soundtracks were nominated for an Academy Award. None won. The lifetime achievement award is his consolation prize, and he is none too happy about that.