Visit his web site for more information.

Annual Updates

2008

 
Harold Blumenfeld is a composer given to language, opera, and the human voice. His Vers Sataniques (Satanic Verse, after Baudelaire), for large orchestra with baritone and mezzo coloratura, was recorded by the National Radio Orchestra of Poland during the first week of November 2007 in Katowice, Poland. The half-hour work is a life cycle embracing the sensual “Le Jet d’eau,” the terrifying death-poem “L’Horloge,” and – after a magical bell interlude – “La Vie anterieure,” a wistful recalling of life from the far side of the tomb. The texts are garnered from the poet’s once-censored Fleurs du mal. Drafted in France, the work was revised and completed in 2007 in St. Louis, MO. The recording, conducted by Joel Suben, featured baritone Donnie Ray Albert and mezzo-soprano Christine Schadeberg; it will be distributed to the stations of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and thereafter in the U.S. Vers Sataniques is to be the central work of a 2008 Centaur Records compact disk titled Cycles, also incorporating works based upon Byron and Rimbaud. Blumenfeld’s newly completed comprehensive American Music Center websiteoffers soundexcerpts, 200 score pages, and notes for 34 works including operas. (Visit www.amc.net, click on “explore,” and enter his name.)

2007

Harold Blumenfeld is a composer given to language and the human voice. Born in Seattle, he studied at Yale with Paul Hindemith and also studied at the University of Zurich. He trained with Leonard Bernstein and Boris Goldovsky in conducting and opera stage direction at Tanglewood, and from the 1970s, with awards from the American Academy and the National Endowment for the Arts, he focused on musical composition. Professor Emeritus of Wasington University in St. Louis, MO, he is active in the areas of musicology and criticism. Recent commissions include Monarch Minstrel for men’s chorus, cello, and piano (St. Louis) and Voci Luminose for two violins and orchestra (Umea Symfoni Orkester, Sweden). His most recent works include the two-act opera Borgia Infami, premiered by the New York City Opera in 2003; For Sion - O Thee!, a choral cycle after Byron’s “Hebrew Melodies;” and the song cycles Sterne und Stein (after orientalist Rudolf Gelpke) and Oak, Feather, and Stone – to Friends Passed and Present, written in 2004. His works are published by MMB Music Inc. You can access his American Music Center website via Google by typing “Blumenfeld works new music jukebox”.