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KDH recently took the ferry over to Shelter Island to visit with Bruce Wolosoff. Bruce is a noted classical composer, pianist, and educator. To my delight, Bruce played the piano during our visit and shared some news on projects he is currently working on. He says, “I can’t imagine a world without music; I don’t know how people can ever be so casual about it.” I hope you enjoy my video above, and Bruce’s KDH Diary below!

Bruce Wolosoff’s musical life began at a very young age. His earliest childhood memory is of sitting at the piano, experimenting with the sounds he could make at the instrument. He began formal lessons at the age of three and by the time he was 13 was zooming around his neighborhood on his bike giving piano lessons to other kids.

After studies at Bard College with composer Joan Tower and graduate studies at the New England Conservatory with composer pianist Jaki Byard, Wolosoff throughout his 20′s was a highly sought-after freelance classical pianist in New York City, performing as recitalist and soloist in New York’s leading classical venues. He was Artistic Director of “Music of Our Time”, an 80th birthday tribute to Olivier Messiaen at Lincoln Center, and made a critically acclaimed recording of piano music by Busoni for Music and Arts Records.

By the age of 30, Bruce Wolosoff stopped performing publicly to devote himself more fully to composing. He got an early start with the Greenwich Village Orchestra, then over time received commissions to create new work for: the Columbus Symphony, the Minnesota Ballet, the Ecole Normale de Musique in France, Danish recorder virtuoso Michala Petri, Carpe Diem String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, and the 21st Century Consort, who have commissioned 5 works from the composer through the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Wolosoff’s chamber opera Madimi, written in collaboration with British librettist Michael Hall, was performed in 2008 by the Center for Contemporary Opera in NY.

“Classical music today is more open than it used to be,” says Wolosoff of this kind of musical cross-pollination.  ”Influence and inspiration come from so many places.” Indeed, Wolosoff, who tries to maintain a relatively quiet life by the sea on Shelter Island [with his acclaimed artist wife, Margaret and their two daughters Juliet & Katya] finds that “different things give me energy at different times of my life, cause me to hear music in my mind.  Good paintings often have that affect on me,” he says. “I once saw a painting, an Algerian landscape by Renoir, and heard an entire movement for piano and orchestra. Monet, Chagall [especially when he is painting with a blue background], Pollock, Kiefer, Bill Jensen, they have all at various times moved me to hear music.”  So does the work of his wife, the distinguished abstract painter, Margaret Garrett, “whose “tuning field” paintings vibrate with amazing musical energy.”

Music itself is often an inspiration. “Sometimes, a certain kind of music is something you can’t get enough of.  You listen for what you need.”  At other times, life itself lights the spark. Wolosoff draws great sustenance from his family, his friends, and his students. “People talk about how much energy it takes to care for children, but they neglect to mention how much energy a child gives you.”

 

Wolosoff says he has “been blessed with amazing teachers”, but he has also always been a busy and sought after teacher in his own right.  He is currently a visiting artist at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, where he started The Creative Orchestra Project. In this innovative program he spends several weeks each year at the school leading a creative orchestra of young student composers. “These are kids of all ages, most of whom have had no formal training,” Wolosoff explains. “I help them imagine music in their heads, then we figure out how to make it sound the way they want it to sound. It is a wild and wonderful process!”

Current projects include a recording of Wolosoff’s music for violin and piano by Chas Wetherbee, the first violinist of the Carpe Diem quartet and an old friend of the composer’s. He is also at work on a new opera based on the children’s novel “The Great Good Thing”, by Roderick Townley.

 

 

*This past season also saw the return of Bruce Wolosoff to the concert stage, performing his own beautiful works for solo piano. A recording of these performances has just been released on CD and is available at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Many-Worlds-Bruce-Wolosoff/dp/B006GC15ZA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323457886&sr=8-1

*Wolosoff  also scored big with a ballet collaboration with Broadway legend Ann Reinking and Melissa Thodos. The team created the critically acclaimed “White City” for Thodos Dance Chicago.

*For more information go to www.brucewolosoff.com