Composer Biography

DALIT HADASS WARSHAW: BIOGRAPHY 

“She played with unassuming grace … The music was unearthly … This is the kind of concert that 2013 was supposed to have ….” ~ San Francisco Chronicle, June 2013

 

An internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and thereminist, Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s works have been performed by numerous orchestral ensembles, including the New York and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras (Zubin Mehta conducting), the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Albany Symphony and the Grand Rapids Symphony.

Warshaw’s music has been widely praised for its lyricism, unique orchestral palette, distinctive harmonic vocabulary, emotional intensity and vivid portrayal of character. Notable orchestral premieres within the last decade include Conjuring Tristan, a “narrative concerto” for piano and orchestra based on Thomas Mann’s “Tristan,” and Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra, performed by both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Albany Symphony. Sirens was described by the Boston Globe as a “sublimely expressive concerto,” and listed among “Boston’s Best Classical Music Concerts in 2019.”

Accolades in recent years include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), the Copland House Residency Award (2023), two MacDowell Fellowships (2019, 2024), a commission from New York State Council on the Arts (2022), and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. Warshaw has also been the recipient of five ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, a Fulbright Scholarship to Israel, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two BMI Awards, among other honors.

In addition to performing the premiere of her piano concerto with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2015, Warshaw has soloed as pianist with the Rockland Symphony, Cheyenne Symphony, and the Misgav Chamber Players under the direction of Lukas Foss, and has been featured widely as both soloist and chamber player in venues such as Avery Fisher Hall, Miller Theatre, and Alice Tully Hall. She has performed her piano works on series such as the KeyedUp Music Project, Cutting Edge Concerts, Ensemble for These Times, and the “Here and Now” Series at Bargemusic, including the premiere of her seven-movement Different Loves, A Cycle of Classical Portraits in 2021. Warshaw was described by the Grand Rapids Press as “a graceful and sensitive pianist [and] an intriguing orchestrator who draws a wealth of colors from an ensemble.”

Having studied theremin with the renowned Clara Rockmore from an early age, she has appeared as theremin soloist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New York Festival of Song, and the San Francisco Symphony, also performing ensembles including with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the American Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester.

Warshaw’s CD, Invocations, was released in January 2011 and is available on Albany Records. Along with providing a diverse representation of her compositional language, this disc integrates the theremin with acoustic ensembles in ways that exhibit the more lyrical, vocal and expressive capacities of this unusual instrument, and that reveal its limitless ways of blending and interacting with different timbral combinations. On it, she performs on a unique and profoundly historical instrument: Clara Rockmore’s theremin, which was built and customized to her specifications by its inventor, Lev Termen, in the early 1930’s, and on which she last performed in 1993.

Warshaw holds Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in music composition from the Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University. A full-time member of the composition faculty at the Boston Conservatory from 2004 to 2014, and formerly on composition faculty at the Juilliard School Extension and Pre-College, she currently serves as Professor of Composition (Adjunct) at CUNY- Brooklyn College. Pending CD recordings include Sirens, to be released on the BMOP/sound label.

Warshaw currently resides in New York with her husband and son.