Two-time GRAMMY winner Herschel Garfein is active as a composer, librettist and stage director. In 2012-13, he was the winner of an NYU Teaching Excellence Award. His recent work includes Mortality Mansions, a song-cycle written and performed in collaboration with the distinguished American poet Donald Hall, which premiered at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University; and the libretto for Sister Carrie (with composer Robert Aldridge) which premiered in 2016 and is now available as a Naxos recording Previously, he wrote and directed My Coma Dreams, a collaboration with jazz pianist/composer Fred Hersch which has been seen in New York, San Francisco and Berlin and is available on DVD.
Garfein won his first GRAMMY award in 2012, for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his “wildly operatic libretto” (–BBC Music Magazine) for Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry in a performance by Florentine Opera, Milwaukee (Naxos). It was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, 2011, and was chosen by Opera News as the #1 Opera Recording of the Year. Garfein won his second GRAMMY in 2016 as Producer of the critically-acclaimed Presidential Suite: eight variations on freedom by composer Ted Nash.
Garfein received his musical training at Yale University, New England Conservatory, and the Experimental Music Studio at MIT. Grants and awards from: The NEA, The Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship (twice), the Jerome Foundation, American Dance Festival, the Sundance Institute, and MacDowel.
At NYU Steinhardt, Garfein teaches private lessons in Music Composition, and the graduate seminar in Script Analysis (for the Program in Vocal Performance).
