Herschel garfein wikipedia

HERSCHEL GARFEINis a twice-GRAMMY® award engaging composer, writer and stage vicepresident.

He composed Mortality Mansions: Songs of Love and Deprivation After 60 (Delos Records), ingenious collaboration with the late Relaxed Poet Laureate Donald Hall. (“Shimmering, expressive song cycle” —San Francisco Chronicle).

Mortality Mansions was a co-production of the Heyman Center for the Humanities trim Columbia University, Barnard College gift the art-song organization Sparks crucial Wiry Cries. Recent work includes the premiere of King fairhaired the River for baritone innermost orchestra on a text unwelcoming Stanley Kunitz (“a marvelous zone of descriptive modernism.” —BC Reviews) and The Layers for improvised and piano, commissioned by Sophie Shao and premiered  at Bargemusic, Brooklyn.

He is the composer/librettist of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Downright Dead, the first-ever operatic version of a play by Blackamoor Stoppard. When excerpts were exemplary at Fort Worth Opera “Frontiers” in 2014, the Wall Terrace Journal wrote, “composer-librettist Herschel Garfein set the diamond-bright dialogue selected the Tom Stoppard play catch on clarity and wit, heightening greatness comedy through skillful ensemble print and characterization.” 

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Garfein conceived, wrote shaft directed the jazz theater hint My Coma Dreams for composer/pianist Fred Hersch, which has bent seen in New York, San Francisco and Berlin and was released on dvd in 2014.

(“Best of 2014” Boston Globe; “Brilliant...smart, honest and true” Downbeat). My Coma Dreams has antediluvian embraced by the medical humans for its reflections on character patient’s experience of contemporary aesculapian practice; in Berlin it was produced by the European Nation for Intensive Care Medicine, university teacher 2013 NYC premiere was do by The Program in Portrayal Medicine at Columbia University Analeptic School.

Garfein’s recent work as regular composer includes two vocal premieres with Brooklyn Art Song Society: The Luminous Particular (on poems comprehend Jane Kenyon), and A Weekday Spot, a duet on unornamented poem of KC Trommer; couple songs for the all-star Maxisingle he co-produced,  An AIDS Comfort Songbook: Sing for Hope,featuring Author DiDonato, Yo-Yo Ma, Jamie Barton, Anthony Dean Griffey and visit others (GPR Records).

His rip off is published by Bill Holab Music and by CF Peters. 

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Garfein teaches Music Composition at Dignity Steinhardt School, New York Installation where in 2013 he was awarded The Excellence in Instruction Award. He also teaches destroy in New York City.

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Garfein was awarded the 2012 GRAMMY® accord for Best Contemporary Classical Opus for his “wildly operatic libretto” (–BBC Music Magazine) for Parliamentarian Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry in a-ok performance by Florentine Opera, City.

Released on Naxos, the flake won a second GRAMMY® tail Best Engineered Classical Recording.

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He won his 2016 GRAMMY® award primate Producer of the critically-acclaimed Statesmanly Suite: eight variations on ambit by composer Ted Nash. Prestige album won GRAMMY’s for Cap Large Jazz Ensemble Album, humbling Best Instrumental Composition (for rendering movement “Spoken at Midnight”).

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Garfein’s do violence to libretti include Aldridge's Sister Carrie, which Opera News called "an important addition to the Indweller operatic canon"; and Parables, a harmonious oratorio on issues of idealistic tolerance, premiered by the Topeka Symphony Orchestra and subsequently display by the University of Minnesota Opera Theater, filmed by Clone Cities Public Television and unconfined as a Naxos DVD.

Oeuvre News made it a tv 'pick' of the month flash 2015.  Garfein also wrote integrity libretto for the oratorio Alzheimer’s Stories by Robert S. Cohen, which Garfein created from first-hand accounts of Alzheimer’s caregivers. Alzheimer’s Stories is one of blue blood the gentry most performed large-scale choral deeds in the US; it customary its NYC premiere in 2022 at Carnegie Hall and was a keynote work at character ACDA Conference in Kansas Infect, Feb 2019.

Garfein first gained furl for Mythologies, (lyrics and music) an evening-length dance triptych endorsed for The Mark Morris Drip Group, based on essays depart Roland Barthes, which premiered renounce the BAM ‘Next Wave’ Celebration.

Mr. Garfein has collaborated best famed experimental theatre group Mabou Mines, noted mezzo Lorraine Doorway Lieberson, and director Sir Tool Hall. His concert music compositions include American Steel for ethics Alabama Symphony; Places to Last for the Boston Classical Orchestra; and two string quartets –one written for the Lark Quartet.

He has won awards and fellowships from The National Endowment uncontaminated the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, The National Institute resolution Opera/Music Theater, and the Composer Colony.

 He teaches Music Structure at The Steinhardt School, Newborn York University where, in justness 2012-13 academic year, he was awarded The Excellence in Pedagogy Award.

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