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Biography
HERSCHEL GARFEIN is a two-time GRAMMY® award winning composer, writer and stage director. He is the composer/librettist of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, the first-ever operatic adaptation of a play by Tom Stoppard. When excerpts were performed at Fort Worth Opera “Frontiers” in 2014, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “composer-librettist Herschel Garfein set the diamond-bright dialogue of the Tom Stoppard play with clarity and wit, heightening the comedy through skillful ensemble writing and characterization.”
Garfein conceived, wrote and directed the jazz theater piece My Coma Dreams for composer/pianist Fred Hersch, which has been 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 been embraced by the medical community for its reflections on the patient's experience of contemporary medical practice; in Berlin it was produced by the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine, its 2013 NYC premiere was produced by The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University Medical School.
Garfein's recent work as a composer includes Mortality Mansions, a song-cycle on Donald Hall poems for tenor Michael Slattery which premiered in March 2017 in a co-production of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, Barnard College and the art-song organization Sparks and Wiry Cries; three songs for the all-star CD he co-produced, An AIDS Quilt Songbook: Sing for Hope featuring Joyce DiDonato, Yo-Yo Ma, Jamie Barton, Anthony Dean Griffey and many others (GPR Records). His songs are also featured on the critically acclaimed New Voices, the debut recording of The Brooklyn Art Song Society.
Garfein teaches Music Composition and lectures in Script Analysis at The Steinhardt School, New York University where, in the 2012-13 academic year, he was awarded The Excellence in Teaching Award. He also teaches privately in New York City.
Garfein was awarded the 2012 GRAMMY® award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his “wildly operatic libretto” (–BBC Music Magazine) for Robert Aldridge's Elmer Gantry in a performance by Florentine Opera, Milwaukee. Released on Naxos, the disk won a second GRAMMY® for Best Engineered Classical Recording.
He won his 2016 GRAMMY® award as Producer of the critically-acclaimed Presidential Suite: eight variations on freedom by composer Ted Nash. The album won GRAMMY's for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, and Best Instrumental Composition (for the movement “Spoken at Midnight”).
Garfein's other libretti include Aldridge's Parables, a symphonic oratorio on issues of religious tolerance, premiered by the Topeka Symphony Orchestra and subsequently staged by the University of Minnesota Opera Theater, filmed by Twin Cities Public Television and released as a Naxos DVD. Opera News made it a video 'pick' of the month in 2015. Garfein also wrote Alzheimer's Stories for Robert S. Cohen, commissioned by the Susquehanna Valley Chorale in 2009, broadcast on Pennsylvania Public Television, and subsequently performed across the country, supported by the Alzheimer's Association of America
Garfein first gained recognition for Mythologies, (lyrics and music) an evening-length dance triptych commissioned for The Mark Morris Dance Group, based on essays of Roland Barthes, which premiered at the BAM 'Next Wave' Festival. Mr. Garfein has collaborated with famed experimental theatre group Mabou Mines, noted mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and director Sir Peter Hall. His concert music compositions include American Steel for the Alabama Symphony; Places to Live 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 for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, The National Institute for Opera/Music Theater, and the MacDowell Colony. He teaches Music Composition and lectures in Script Analysis at The Steinhardt School, New York University where, in the 2012-13 academic year, he was awarded The Excellence in Teaching Award.
OPERA America/Opera.ca Grants Awarded
Click here to learn more about OPERA America granting programs.
| GRANT NAME | YEAR | The Opera Fund: Repertoire Development | 2013 | The Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase | 2013 | The Opera Fund: Audience Development | 2007 | The Opera Fund: Audience Development | 2005 | Opera for a New America | 1993 | Opera for a New America | 1991 |
Productions
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Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
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