June in Buffalo 2023 Senior Composer: Mathew Rosenblum

We’re thrilled to welcome Mathew Rosenblum back to June in Buffalo as a senior composer this year. Mathew has visited UB on multiple occasions, including as a JiB senior composer in 2009. We’re especially pleased to present a major recent work for soprano and six percussionists, We Lived Happily During the War (2021), based on a poem by Ilya Kaminsky and performed by soprano Jamie Jordan and Talujon, for whom the work was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation.

(Source: https://www.mathewrosenblum.com/?page_id=134 )

With diverse musical elements derived from classical, jazz, rock, and world music traditions, Mathew Rosenblum’s compositions offer “an ear-buzzing flood of sound, rich in unusual overtones” (The Boston Globe), The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette proclaimed that his work Mobius Loop was “richly layered… and that it “shimmered with vibrancy.” A wide array of groups have commissioned, performed, and recorded his music such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig, the Harry Partch Institute, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, FLUX Quartet, Mantra Percussion, Music from China as well as many others. Using a variety of tuning systems, his work does not live within traditional boundaries, creating a compellingly fresh landscape.

Rosenblum spearheaded the highly successful Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival at The Andy Warhol Museum where his new work, Last Round (ostatnia runda) composed for FLUX Quartet and Mantra Percussion was premiered. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it “impressive,” “visceral” and “tribal.” The New York Times said of the N.Y. premiere of Rosenblum’s work, Falling, that it “overshadowed” everything else on the program, it was “rapt, fretful, eerily suspended.” George Grella of New York Classical Review stated: “Falling blends electronics, spoken word, and live music more effectively than most other such efforts. The piece compresses foreground and background into a rich, floating mass… the path into the heart of the piece is both clear and infinite.”

His works have been performed throughout the North America, Europe, and Asia including at the ISCM World Music Days in Oslo, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the China-ASEAN Music Week in Nanning, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf, the Bing Theater in LA, Prince Mahidol Hall in Bangkok, Sala Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico City, and at the Sonic Boom Festival, the Kitchen, Merkin Hall, Symphony Space, the Guggenheim Museum, and Miller Theatre in New York City.

In July of 2015 he was a featured composer at the Thailand International Composition Festival. In 2009 he was a Senior Faculty Composer at the June in Buffalo Festival. Other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Music Fellowship Grants, a Heinz Endowments Creative Heights Award, three Fromm Foundation Commissions, a National Endowment for the Arts Music Fellowship Grant, a Barlow Endowment Commission, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship Grant. He has also received awards and fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Institute of Contemporary American Music, the Rockefeller Foundation, BMI, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center, and Yaddo.

He received degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and Princeton University and is currently Professor of Music and former Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh where he also co-directs the Music on the Edge new music series. His works appear on the MODE, New World Records, Albany, New Focus Recordings, BMOP/sound, Capstone, Opus One, Blue Griffin, and CRI Emergency Music labels and is published by C.F. Peters Corporation and Plurabelle Music (distributed by Subito Music Corporation).
(Source: https://www.mathewrosenblum.com/?page_id=159)

Falling by Mathew Rosenblum

Soprano Jamie Jordan will be coming to Buffalo to perform two of Mathew’s works: Falling with [Switch~ Ensemble] on Friday, June 9^th at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall, and We Lived Happily During the War with Talujon on Thursday, June 8^th at 7:30 p.m., also in Lippes.

Mathew Rosenblum’s work can be found here: https://www.mathewrosenblum.com/?page_id=58