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on behalf of
The American Society for Jewish Music
for the Conference
"The Art of Synagogue Music"
November 12-14, 2006
New York City
Biography of Michael Isaacson
Composer Contact:
Email: eggcreamer@sbcglobal.net
Michael Isaacson, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. April 22, 1946. Isaacson was educated at Hunter College, and Brooklyn College with MA in music composition. He studied composition with Robert Starer, keyboard at Julliard with John Mehegan and ethnomusicology with Israel Adler at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He went on to study with Samuel Adler and Warren Benson at Eastman School of Music where he earned a PhD in composition.
Isaacson is founding Artistic Director of The Israel Pops Orchestra, and the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. Michael Isaacson enjoys a distinguished career as a composer, conductor, producer, and educator with over 500 Jewish and secular musical compositions published, including instrumental, vocal, sacred and secular arrangements, editions and educational works, the two-volume, five hundred page Michael Isaacson Songbook, and over 50 produced CDs and album recordings. (For more information on his recordings, : see his website).
Isaacson is presently completing a book entitled Jewish Music as Midrash. In Los Angeles, from 1976 -1990, while holding adjunct faculty positions at Loyola Marymount, Cal State-Long Beach, and UCLA, Dr. Isaacson composed and conducted original scores and arranged for many well known television series including The Bob Hope Show, John Williams & The Boston Pops with Joan Baez, Rich Man, Poor Man II, Little Women, Bionic Woman, Hawaii Five-0, Time Travelers, and the daytime dramas Loving and Days of Our Lives. His music has also been heard on The Nanny, Curb Your Enthusiasm and feature films The Passover Plot and Liberty Heights.
As an arranger, orchestrator and conductor for feature films, he has had the pleasure of assisting composers John Williams, Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Walter Scharf, and Charles Fox. In 1997 he completed the entire symphonic music for 18 films and permanent exhibitions at New York's Museum of the Jewish Heritage recorded by the Israel Philharmonic. He also produced Ten Lessons in Jewish Music Composition, a 5-hour reocrded course.
For the past 18 years he has conducted, toured and produced new recordings of vocal and symphonic music with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tel Aviv Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Vermont Symphony and Chorus, the Bulgarian National Symphony, the Czech Chamber Orchestra and the Israel String Quartet.
Music albums composed, orchestrated and/or conducted for the Los Angeles Jewish community include: Regeneration and Legacy with Cantor Nathan Lam; Guardians of the Heart, Hope for the Future and Kol Truah with Cantor Jay Frailich. He also worked on From Sinai to Sinai with Cantor Meir Finklestein; and Windows: The Songs of Rabbi Moshe Rothblum with Cantor David Silverstein. He has produced the first collection of the Jewish Music Group CD label American Jewish Summer.
His latest CD has him conducting Stephen Richard's one act opera The Ballad of Ruth featuring Faith Steinsnyder, the Michael Isaacson Singers and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
More Information About Michael Isaacson
Max Stern. "In the spirit of Jewish music," The Jerusalem Post, January 16, 2005, ARTS, p20.
(Go Back to "American Judaism's Lost Legacy" Ten Composers Page)
CONTACT INFORMATION:
The Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, New York
ASJM phone: (212) 294-8328
ASJM FAX: (212) 294-6161
Email: asjm@cjh.org
For more information about the Society, see ASJM website:
http://www.jewishmusic-asjm.org/ or ASJM INFO
November 5, 2006
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