Harold Meltzer

Biography

Harold Meltzer (June 8, 1966 – August 12, 2024) was an American composer. Meltzer was inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on its American Classics label, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times and in Fanfare; new all-Meltzer recordings issued from Open G Records (2017), Bridge Records (2018), and BMOP/Sound (2019). A Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2009 for his sextet Brion, Meltzer has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize; a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Among his late works are Vision Machine (2016), commissioned by NewMusicUSA for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Bride of the Island (2016), a song cycle to poems of Ted Hughes commissioned by the Minnesota Commissioning Club for tenor Paul Appleby and pianist Natalia Katyukova; Piano Quartet (2015–16); commissioned by the Boston Chamber Music Society; Variations on a Summer Day (2012–16), a song cycle to the Wallace Stevens poem for mezzo-soprano and nine instruments commissioned by the Fromm Foundation for Mary Nessinger and the Maverick Concerts and its director, Alexander Platt; In Full Sail (2015, 2017), commissioned by Piano Spheres for Nadia Shpachenko; and Fortunes (2015), commissioned by the Roger Shapiro Fund for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Among his more often performed chamber works are Sindbad (2003–05), a chamber music theater work for narrator and piano trio, commissioned by Meet The Composer for the Peabody Trio and actor Walter Van Dyk; Aqua (2011), a string quartet commissioned through the award of the Barlow Prize in 2008 for the Avalon, Lydian, and Pacifica Quartets; and Kreisleriana (2012, 2014), commissioned by the Library of Congress for violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen. Later projects include a piano concerto commissioned by Brandon Fradd for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and songs for mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society.

Founder and co-director for fifteen years of the new music ensemble Sequitur, he lived with his wife and two children in the East Village of Manhattan. He has taught at Amherst and Vassar Colleges, and also taught at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University.

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