Composer Biography

Dalit Warshaw photo: Miranda Loud

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 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.

Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, her theremin concerto, Sirens, was premiered in October 2019 by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and subsequently performed by the Albany Symphony in November. Sirens was listed among “Boston’s Best Classical Music Concerts in 2019” by the Boston Globe.

Dalit Warshaw with Zubin Mehta

Since becoming the youngest winner of the BMI Award for an orchestral work written at the age of eight, additional awards include 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. In 2017, she received an OPERA America Discovery Grant for Female Composers, in addition to the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts.

 

As pianist, Warshaw has performed widely as a soloist and chamber player, in venues asAt the piano - National Opera Center - 2019 diverse as Avery Fisher Hall, Miller Theater, Alice Tully Hall and the Stone, her repertoire ranging from the piano concerti of Mozart, Schumann and Grieg to her own compositions and improvisations. She has soloed with the Rockland Symphony, Cheyenne Symphony, and the Misgav Chamber Players under the direction of Lukas Foss, and premiered Conjuring Tristan, her “narrative concerto for piano and orchestra,” with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2015. She 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.”

Soloing on theremin at Merkin Hall with NYFOS, Nov. 2015Having 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 with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the American Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, among other ensembles.

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.

BMOP Rehearsal of Sirens - studying score - WBUR photoWarshaw has held multiple residencies at the Yaddo and MacDowell Artist Colonies, and is a graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where she obtained her doctorate in music composition. Since serving on the composition faculty of the Boston Conservatory from 2004 to 2014, Warshaw currently teaches on the composition faculties of CUNY- Brooklyn College and the Juilliard School. Pending CD recordings include Sirens, to be released on the BMOP/sound label.

 

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

 

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