A lot of you are wondering about who Composer Avo is. Well here is my shot at enlightening you. These snippets have been collected from disparate sources.
Composer Avo is actually Avo Somer and he was born in 1934 in Parnu Estonia. Right now Avo lives in USA and is referred to as an American musicologist music theorist and composer.
Avo Somer emigrated from Estonia with his parents in 1944, when he was ten years old, first to Germany and then to the United States. He had already begun playing the piano as a child in Parnu. In Germany he took some piano lessons and instruction in theory, and began to compose, but systematic instruction in music came only later.
He majored in music education, piano performance, and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, followed by graduate studies at the University of Michigan where, in 1957, he earned an M. A. with a thesis on Monteverdi’s madrigals, and then, in 1963, a PhD with a dissertation “The Keyboard Music of Johann Jakob Froberger” (Maimets 2000).
In 1962 he joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut, where he remained until his retirement in 2000. Since that time he has increased his activity as a writer, and has spoken at conferences in Estonia on the music of Eduard Tubin, twentieth-century music in general, and the theories of Heinrich Schenker.
I think this gentleman is a true reflection of the American Dream. How an immigrant can come to US, work hard, make a life for himself and achieve fame.
