Program Biography

Among the most honored composers of his generation, Richard Danielpour has written a wide range of orchestral, chamber, instrumental, ballet, and vocal works. He has been commissioned by a Who's Who of international musical institutions, festivals, and artists, and his music has been championed by Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri, Emerson, and American String Quartets, and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, David Zinman, Zdenek Macal, and Leonard Slatkin. His first opera, Margaret Garner, with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, was hailed as a triumph during its recent sold-out runs at the Michigan Opera Theater and Cincinnati Opera, commissioners with Opera Company of Philadelphia.

Danielpour has received a Grammy Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim Award, Bearns Prize from Columbia University, and grants and residencies from the Barlow Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, and the American Academy in Rome. He was one of the first composers invited for a coveted residency at the American Academy in Berlin. He was only the third composer --after Stravinsky and Copland-- to be signed to an exclusive recording contract by Sony Classical, and his music can also be heard extensively on Delos, Koch, Harmonia Mundi, New World, and Reference Recordings.

Mr. Danielpour is an active educator and believes deeply in the nurturing of young musicians. Beyond serving on the faculties of both the Curtis Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, he also spends a great deal of time giving master classes throughout the country, and coaching and mentoring young musicians.