Osvaldo Golijov, classical music composer

Osvaldo Golijov

Biography

Osvaldo Noé Golijov (born in La Plata, Argentina, December 5, 1960) is a Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.

Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of a lifetime of experience with various types of music. His Romanian Jewish parents exposed him to the traditional Klezmer music and liturgical music of their faith, growing up and going to public school in Argentina showed him the many musical styles of his family's adopted country, including the tango. Once Golijov traveled abroad to continue his studies, the influences of other people and other styles became part of him. What is considered so remarkable about his musical language is that, rather than a pastiche of styles, it is wholly cohesive. It is thought of as vibrant and alive, growing and changing as he does.

Golijov's mother was a piano teacher, his father, a physician. He was raised "surrounded by chamber classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Ástor Piazzolla," according to his official website. He studied piano at the local conservatory in La Plata and studied composition with Gerardo Gandini.

In 1983, Golijov moved to Israel, where he studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy. Three years later, he moved to the United States of America with his wife, Silvia. There he studied with American composer George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania before receiving his doctorate.

Golijov has received a MacArthur Fellowship[1] and other awards. He has been composer-in-residence at the Spoleto USA Festival, in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Music Alive series, at the Marlboro Music School and Festival, the Ravinia Festival, and several other festivals. He also is co-composer-in-residence (together with the English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage) of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Golijov is Loyola Professor of Music at the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1991. He is also on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory.  He has three children.

Golijov and composers Sofia Gubaidulina, Tan Dun, and Wolfgang Rihm were commissioned by the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart to write pieces for the Passion 2000 project in commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach. Golijov's contribution was La Pasión según San Marcos (The Passion according to St. Mark).

He has also composed and arranged works for the Kronos Quartet and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. He frequently works with Venezuelan conductor Maria Guinand, who conducted the world premieres of Oceana (commissioned by the Oregon Bach Festival, 1996) and La Pasión según San Marcos (Stuttgart's European Music Festival, 2000), classical and Klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, and American soprano Dawn Upshaw, who performed premieres of his new opera, Ainadamar (and Arias and Ensembles derived from it) at the Santa Fe Opera Festival in 2005, London's Barbican Arts Centre in 2006 and Opera Boston in 2007. His first movie soundtrack experience was for Sally Potter's 2000 film "The Man Who Cried". More recently he composed for Francis Ford Coppola's movie Youth Without Youth and original music for Coppola's movie Tetro.

Golijov received two Grammys in the Grammy Awards of 2007 - the Best Opera Recording for Ainadamar: Fountain Of Tears and Best Classical Contemporary Composition for the same opera.

Cornish College of the Arts (in Seattle) is currently featuring a retrospective on Osvaldo Golijov featuring the ODEONQUARTET on April 22, 2011. The program includes "Tenebrae", "
Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind" (1994), for clarinet and string quartet, "Lullaby and Doina" (2001), for flute, clarinet, string quartet and double bass , "Lúa Descolorida" (2002), for soprano and string quarte and "How Slow the Wind" (2001), for soprano and string quartet.

(from Wikipedia)

Composer Title Date Action
Osvaldo Golijov Omaramor 01/16/2011 Play Add to playlist