| Information: |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947) is a classical composer. He is known for combining popular, folk, and classical music forms.
Schoenfield was born in 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. He began to take piano lessons at the age of six, and wrote his first composition a year later. Among his teachers were Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh and Rudolf Serkin. He holds a B.A. degree from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the University of Arizona.
Schoenfield was formerly an active concert pianist, as a soloist and with groups including Music from Marlboro. He gave the premiere of his piano concerto Four Parables with the Toledo Symphony in 1983. Jeffrey Kahane recorded the work in 1994 with John Nelson and the New World Symphony. Also on the Argo CD are Vaudeville, Schoenfield's concerto for piccolo trumpet, played by Wolfgang Basch, and Klezmer Rondos, concerto for flute, baritone and orchestra, performed by flutist Carol Wincenc."
In 1994, the same year he was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize, an evening of Schoenfield's pieces was presented at Reinberger Hall by violinist Lev Polyakin and other members of the Cleveland Orchestra with the composer at the piano. Cleveland Orchestra principal violist Robert Vernon gave the world premiere of Schoenfield's viola concerto in 1998.
Schoenfield's two-act opera, The Merchant and the Pauper, was commissioned by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and given its premiere there in 1999.
Schoenfield's song cycle Camp Songs was commissioned by Seattle's Music of Remembrance. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003. The song cycle Ghetto Songs, commissioned by MOR, was recorded in 2009 by Naxos.
Schoenfield is a Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan. Mr Schoenfield is also a dedicated scholar of the Talmud and of mathematics.
|