2012 Venice Biennale interview
Hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting,” and chosen as one of the 30 composers under 40 by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440, Yotam Haber, was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee. Haber received the 2007-2008 Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize and resided at the American Academy in Rome for a year beginning in September 2007. He was the recipient of the 2005 Guggenheim, and commissioned by Pritzker Prize winning architect Peter Zumthor. He has received recent commissions from the Alabama Symphony, the American Composers Forum and the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program, Meet the Composer, and the Harvard Fromm Foundation.
He received a 2002 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Award for his chamber orchestra work, In Sleep a King, and another one in 2004 for his double clarinet quintet, Blur. In 2004, he also won the second bi-annual ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize for the wind ensemble work, Espresso, which was performed at Carnegie Hall by Rutgers Wind Ensemble, directed by William Berz, and consequently recorded for release in the fall of 2006.
He has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center (studying with George Benjamin and Osvaldo Golijov), the Aspen Music Festival (studies with Chris Rouse and Nicholas Maw), and been in residence at the Hermitage, the Aaron Copland House, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Yaddo, and the Macdowell Colony (where he was the recipient of the first ASCAP Foundation Composer Fellowship); and has won fellowships to the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Bogliasco and IRCAM. His music has been performed in Germany, Italy, Holland, and across the U.S.
Since 2010, Haber has served as Artistic Director of MATA, the non-profit organization, founded in 1996 by Philip Glass, Lisa Bielawa, and Eleonor Sandresky, dedicated to commissioning and presenting new works by young composers from around the world.
2013 promises new, exciting projects including the premiere of A more Convenient Season, a 70′ work for the Alabama Symphony; The Voice Imitator, a collaboration with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit; and a monograph CD of recent works recorded by GPR Records and distributed by NAXOS.
recent news
2013 March New work for Either/Or
2012 November 16 Recipient of Roger Sessions Prize at Bogliasco Foundation
2012 October 30 Recipient of Fromm Foundation commission, Harvard University, for Collide-O-Scope Music
2012 October 25 Gabriel Kahane performs Once the Ocean Takes You at debut Carnegie Hall concert
2012 October 18 Alarm Will Sound premieres new version of We Were All
2012 October 9 Venice Biennale premiere of between composure and seduction
2012 March 6, 7:30pm Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, premiere of A Wife Explains why she Likes Country, with Mischa Bouvier, Baritone and Yegor Shevtsov, Piano. Presented by Concert Artist Guild.
2012 So pleased with the excellent recording of On Leaving Brooklyn on GPR Records – #12 on the Billboard Charts! Available for download on Itunes.
2011 I Am for string quartet and chorus receives its U.S. premiere as part of the American Composers Orchestra | Sounds of a New Century festival – SONiC, at Miller Theatre, Columbia University, October 16 with JACK Quartet + The New York Virtuoso Singers.
2011 Nathan Koci premieres new work for accordion and electronics at the Music At First Series, featured as a critics’ pick in Time Out New York. October 14th.
2011 On Leaving Brooklyn, for 4 singers and violin, commissioned by Five Boroughs Music Festival, for the Five Borough Songbook, to be premiered October 6, Galapagos Arts Space.
2011 We Were All for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund, and premiered by Alarm Will Sound at the Mizzou New Music Festival, July 2011. LISTEN
2010 commissioning music/USA grant from Meet the Composer to write a new chamber orchestra piece, New Ghetto Music, for the NYC-based Knights Ensemble with Christina Courtin as vocal soloist-singer. Premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center, January 2011.
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EDUCATION
After attending Indiana University, studying with Eugene O’Brien and Claude Baker, he completed a doctorate in composition at Cornell University in 2004, under Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky. He spent 2000 in Bologna, Italy, as part of the Course on Use of Live Electronics, taught by Alvise Vidolin (Luigi Nono’s sound engineer) and the composer Adriano Guarnieri.