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Joseph Horowitz

educator

About this Artist

JOSEPH HOROWITZ has long been a pioneer in classical music programming, beginning with his tenure as Artistic Advisor for the annual Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y. In the 1990s, as Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, resident orchestra of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he received national attention for “The Russian Stravinsky,” “American Transcendentalists,” “Flamenco,” and other festivals exploring the folk roots of concert works.

Now an artistic advisor to various American orchestras, he has created more than three dozen interdisciplinary music festivals since 1985. His Pacific Symphony projects this season include a Shostakovich festival including Solomon Volkov, and incorporating film, chamber music, and a scripted dramatization. In Fall 2008, he inaugurated the New York Philharmonic’s “Inside the Music” series, writing, hosting and producing a program about Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony; his subsequent and pending Philharmonic productions explore Dvořák, Brahms and Stravinsky.

He is currently curating thematic festival projects for the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Columbus Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, the Austin Symphony, the University of Texas, the DePauw University School of Music. He is also the founding Artistic Director of PostClassical Ensemble, a DC-based chamber orchestra whose festivals regularly collaborate with the National Gallery of Art and Georgetown University.

Called “our nation’s leading scholar of the symphony orchestra” by Charles Olton, former President of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Mr. Horowitz is also the award-winning author of ten books mainly dealing with the institutional history of classical music in the United States. His most recent book is “On My Way” – The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and “Porgy and Bess” (Norton). Both his Classical Music in America: A History (2005) and Artists in Exile: How Refugees from 20th Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts (2008) were named best books of the year by The Economist. As Project Director of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) National Education Project, as well as an NEH Teacher Training Institute, he is the author of a book for young readers entitled Dvořák in America, linked to a state-of-the-art DVD. As Project Director of “Music Unwound,” he presides over a national NEH initiative propagating thematic, cross-disciplinary symphonic programming.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, Mr. Horowitz served as Artistic Director of an annual national institute for music critics, based at Columbia University. A former New York Times music critic, Mr. Horowitz writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement (UK) and contributes frequently to scholarly journals. He lectures widely in the United States and abroad. His many honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEH fellowships and a commendation from the Czech Parliament for his many festival projects exploring Dvořák in America. His website is www.josephhorowitz.com. His blog: www.artsjournal.com/uq.