Biography
Brian Clément-Foreman received his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and his Master of Music from Southern Methodist University, where he studied composition with Thom David Mason. He studied composition an additional three years under Donald Erb at SMU. Mr. Clément-Foreman studied guitar there as well with Robert Guthrie, and in master classes with Segovia. He attended master classes in composition with such luminaries as Howard Hanson, Aaron Copland, Gunther Schuller, Stephen Dodgson, Jacob Druckman, Bernard Rands, and Ned Rorem.
Mr. Clément-Foreman has created numerous works for varying media that have been performed throughout North America and Europe. His Ætheria was written on commission and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1982. It has subsequently been performed in Latin America, Spain, and Switzerland. The piece is featured on Carlo Pezzimenti’s Ætheria on Elba.
Besides being recorded, his works have been heard on radio and television in this country and abroad, including in a series of broadcast performances in Italy and Romania. Mr. Clément-Foreman has been the subject of interviews in area publications such as the Dallas Observer and the Dallas Morning News. He appeared on the television program Classical Texas as the subject of a half-hour interview covering his music and the art of music composition. He has composed as well for film. His commissioned work for piano and guitar, Euterpe, premiered in 1999 and was performed in Holywell Hall, University of Oxford, at Oxford, England, and El Escorial (the Royal Palace), in Madrid. He composed Acadian Dance No. 2 (also in 1999) for an art exhibition in his hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. The work for piano, string orchestra, Acadian accordian, and violin incorporates elements of the folk music of the region, elements which make appearances in many of his compositions. That same year, he composed his work Divertissement for chamber ensemble OPUS III, which also commissioned it.
Mr. Clément-Foreman was chosen as one of two featured composers for the Dallas-Fort Worth Classical Guitar Exposition at Meadows Museum at SMU. Several of his works were performed at the week-long event, including the premiere of Six Preludes, a guitar composition commissioned for the Exposition.
Mr. Clément-Foreman has sustained a long and devoted career teaching guitar, music theory, and composition in colleges and private studios. His years teaching and performing have benefited his many students, several of whom have received scholarships at the university and conservatory levels. He has served on the faculty at Brookhaven College in Dallas, founded the guitar program at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas, created and hosted the radio program Guitaristic on WRR-FM, and served as critic for the journal of the Dallas Classical Guitar Society. With John Flohr and Carlo Pezzimenti, Mr. Clément-Foreman has published two method books: A Study of Guitar and Essential Guitar.
Mr. Clément-Foreman is married to pianist Be-Fong Shih. They live and make music in the Dallas area.