MA Queens College of the City University of New York

222 Baird Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo NY, 14260

tel: (716) 645-2765, x.1242
fax: (716) 645-3824
email: haroldrosenbaum@gmail.com
www.haroldrosenbaum.com

Harold Rosenbaum is one of the most accomplished and productive choral conductors of our time. A vital force in American choral music for 33 years, Mr. Rosenbaum is founder and artistic director of two major choral groups:  the Canticum Novum Singers, now celebrating its 33th season, and the New York Virtuoso Singers, now marking its 18th. Mr. Rosenbaum has conducted over 1,300 concerts with these choirs and with others, including the Westchester Oratorio Society and his university choirs.

In addition, he has collaborated over 100 times with leading orchestras such as The New York Philharmonic with James Conlon, The Brooklyn Philharmonic (over 50 times) with Robert Spano, Lukas Foss, Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Christie, and Grant Llewellyn, The American Symphony with Leon Botstein, The American Composers Orchestra with Steven Sloane, The Riverside Symphony with George Rothman, The Orchestra of St. Luke's with Sir Charles Mackerras, plus The Juilliard Orchestra, The Bard Festival Orchestra, and others. He has also collaborated with P.D.Q. Bach in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Halls, with The Mark Morris Dance Group, Bang on a Can, The Glyndebourne Opera Company, and The Bel Canto Opera Company.

Mr. Rosenbaum's choirs have performed many times on Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series, and have appeared on The David Letterman Show, at The Tanglewood Festival, and in concerts with James Galway, Tony Randall, Tony Bennett, Licia Albanese, Marianne Faithful, Leonard Slatkin, The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, Ilana Vered, Ned Rorem and many others. As a consultant to G. Schirmer, Inc. and Hal Leonard Corporation, Mr. Rosenbaum performs several important roles. He composes, recommends scores for publication, gives workshops and clinics, and shares his broad knowledge of the choral field with Schirmer's editorial and marketing team. Recently he uncovered and edited a major choral work by Samuel Barber, which G. Schirmer is in the process of publishing.

Mr. Rosenbaum has held professorships at four universities, including The Juilliard School; he is currently a professor at University at Buffalo, where he directs the choirs, and teaches conducting and other courses. He has created a commissioning program for young composers, an annual choral composition competition, and has premiered over 100 works, including compositions by Ravel (in Paris), Schnittke, Henze, Berio, and Perle. Other highlights in his distinguished career include over 80 concerts on 17 European tours, where he has conducted the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, L'Orchestre d'Europe, the New Prague Collegium, and the Madeira Bach Festival Orchestra, and has appeared in Festivals in Portugal, Italy, and England.

He has been heard on dozens of radio and television broadcasts, including Voice of America worldwide, in multiple live broadcasts from Symphony Space and on WNCN, and on 11 commercial CD's for SONY Classical, Albany Records, CRI, Bridge Records, Koch International and Capstone Records. In December 2005, he will conduct the Canticum Novum Singers on CBS Television's "48 Hours".

Recent highlights included: conducting The Walla Walla Symphony, multiple collaborations with The Brooklyn Philharmonic, another with The American Composers Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and his performances of Bach's St. John Passion, Monteverdi's Vespers with Baroque Orchestra, Rachmaninoff's Vespers performed in Church Slavonic, and premieres by Krenek, Imbrie, Harbison, Ran, Musgrave, Conti, and Kingswood.

Also recently Mr. Rosenbaum once again conducted The New York Virtuoso Singers at Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music, and returned to The Bard Music Festival with his expanded (ninety-voice) New York Virtuoso Singers, which performed works in Czech, Polish and Russian. Other recent concerts include Bach’s St. John Passion in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Nathan Currier’s oratorio Gaian Variations in Avery Fisher Hall with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Verdi’s Requiem in Carnegie Hall with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and all five of his choirs. In December of 2003 The New York Virtuoso Singers performed John Adams’ opera The Death of Klinghoffer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

For the 2004-2005 season, The New York Virtuoso Singers returned to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in a performance of Lost Objects by David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe. Other highlights included a benefit concert in Town Hall for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids on the theme of same sex love, and a performance of all of Samuel Barber’s chamber choral music, both published and unpublished. In December of 2005 Mr. Rosenbaum and his Canticum Novum Singers appeared throughout an hour long special on a nationally broadcast CBS TV program called "The Mystery of the Nativity".

Consistently glowing press reviews praise the quality of his interpretations and performances, attesting to his total devotion to the highest standards of choral music expression.