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René grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, the son of an American embassy official and began piano lessons at seven. After four years in boarding schools (U.K. & Buffalo N.Y.) he returned to Beirut, began composing music, and as an adolescent worked through The Study of Counterpoint, a famous treatise used by many classical composers.
After the family moved to Eugene, he double-majored in Music and German at the University of Oregon, studying under Homer Keller (music composition), Hal Owen (theory, counterpoint), and Rumanian pianist Alexandru Hrisanides (piano). Subsequently, he studied with the late Polish pianist Adam Kapuscinski (a student of A. Michalowski, himself a pupil of Liszt).
After graduation René worked in the mental health field by day while continuing to compose music. He became involved with electronic music and composed the ‘Voyager’ Concerto for piano and synthesizers, which may be the only concerto written for that combination of instruments. His cover article “Electronic Orchestration” appeared in Electronic Musician magazine. In the early 1990s he performed concerts in the Pacific Northwest, including the world premiere of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on synthesizers, as noted in Keyboard Magazine. René founded and for several years directed the Alliance Recognizing Talent in Eugene (A.R.T.E.), a consortium of 40+ musicians/artists. His original music has been recorded in North America and in Europe, performed on NPR, and spans multiple styles from classical to electronic—even including a folk song (“My Beautiful Country”). About his music, René says simply: “I like my music to sing.”
As an adult René also developed a deep interest in religion, managing the website Mythicist Papers and publishing three books in the field: "Buddhist and Christian Parallels" (2004), "The Myth of Nazareth" (2008), and "NazarethGate" (2015).The following 1 pages are in this category, out of 1 total.
