Michael Hersch

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Michael Hersch (b. 1971) "has inspired remarkable- and sometimes ecstatic- excitement in the world of classical music", wrote Tim Page in the Washington Post. Before the age of 30, Hersch was awarded the Prix de Rome (2000) and the Berlin Prize (2001), as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship (1997), and he has had his music performed around the world. In December 1996, Hersch was a graduate student at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, contemplating what life as a composer would be like after graduation, when conductor Marin Alsop picked his score as the winner of the American Composers Prize and gave the work, Elegy for strings, a performance at Lincoln Center in February 1997.

Since that time, Hersch has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the 92°d Street Y, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and many other organizations. His music has been performed in Europe, Russia, the Far East and the US.

This fall, while in Berlin, Hersch completed the score of his Symphony No. 2, which was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony and Mariss Jansons. It will receive its world premiere in Pittsburgh on April 26, followed by the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 30, 2002. A new work for clarinet and cello was performed at the Pantheon in Rome this fall at the RomaEuropa Festival. Also this season, Hersch's recent orchestral work, Ashes of Memory, will be performed by six different orchestras in the US, Europe and Australia. For the 2002/03 season, Hersch will compose a piano concerto for pianist Garrick Ohlsson, for a consortium of orchestras led by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Oregon Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Music Director Hans Vonk will conduct the world premiere in St. Louis in November 2002.

Highlights from last season included the New York premiere of Ashes of Memory in March 2001, performed by Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony at Carnegie Hall, and the world premiere of a commissioned work, Umbra, for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Robert Spano in April 2001. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented two new works last season: the New York premiere of his Solo Sonata for Violin, and a piano piece, Mistral, which Mr. Hersch performed at Merkin Concert Hall. His music was also featured in a program hosted by Ned Rorem at the 92nd Street Y. Hersch's alma mater, Peabody Conservatory, also performed Ashes of Memory at Lincoln Center in April 2001, and in May, Merkin Concert Hall presented a chamber concert featuring his music. While in Rome during the summer of 2001, Hersch wrote a work for the composer Hans Werner Henze, Reflection on a Work Henze, which Hersch performed for Mr. Henze on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

Other past performance highlights include the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's commission and performance of Hersch's Symphony No. 1 with Alan Gilbert conducting in November 1999, and a repeat of the work at the Cabrillo Festival with conductor Marin Alsop in 2000. In October 1998 the New York Chamber Symphony performed the world premiere of Recollections of Fear, Hope arid Discontent and the CBC Vancouver Symphony performed the premiere of On Sorrow, Anger and Reflection. In April 1999 Hersch's Piano Quartet received its premiere at Weill Recital Hall, commissioned by the Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Young Composers Workshop at Carnegie Hall.

Michael Hersch's chamber music has been performed at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tanglewood Music Festival, the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, the American Music Festival in Washington DC, Merkin Concert Hall in New York, and elsewhere around the world.

One of the youngest composers ever to win the Guggenheim Fellowship in Music (1997), Mr. Hersch has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the American Composers Award, the New York Youth Symphony's "First Music" prize, two "Meet the Composer" grants, three ASCAP Young Composer Awards and five ASCAP Foundation grants. In 1997 he was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. In June 1998, he attended the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.

Mr. Hersch was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Reston, Virginia. He studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia and received a Certificate in Composition in 1995. In 1997 he completed his Masters Degree in Composition at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.