Bruce Wolosoff

Composer and pianist Bruce Wolosoff incorporates elements of blues and jazz into his works and also often collaborates with visual artists and choreographers. Several recordings of his music have appeared on classical best-seller charts. Wolosoff was born in New York on March 27, 1955. His birth name was Bruce Germont; after his father's death, his mother remarried, and he was given her second husband's surname. He played in rock bands as a teenager but also took classical piano lessons. Wolosoff attended Bard College in New York state, studying composition with Joan Tower and also participating in avant-garde improvisation. He went on for a master's degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory of Music, studying there with jazz pianist-composer Jaki Byard. Among his other teachers were pianist German Diez, composer Lawrence Widdoes, and dance educator and administrator Hilda Schuster at the Dalcroze School of Music in New York. In the 1980s, Wolosoff was active as a freelance pianist in New York, earning some strong reviews, and he gave the world premiere of Richard Danielpour's Piano Concerto No. 2. In 1986, he issued an album of music by Ferruccio Busoni on the Music and Arts Programs of America label. In 1988, he organized an 80th birthday celebration honoring Olivier Messiaen. Soon after that, he temporarily gave up concertizing on the piano in order to devote full time to composition. He soon earned commissions for new music from a variety of musicians, including recorder player Michala Petri, the Lark Quartet, and the Greenwich Village Orchestra. Wolosoff remained interested in jazz and blues, and after 2000, beginning with the clarinet trio Blues for the New Millennium (2001), he began to incorporate elements of these genres into his concert works. That work was premiered at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and Wolosoff's works attracted performances from the likes of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, and the Eroica Trio; the latter commissioned The Loom, a work inspired by the watercolors of artist Eric Fischl. In the 2010s and 2020s, Wolosoff has written various works that entailed interaction with visual art, and he also collaborated with the late choreographer Ann Reinking on three ballets. Most of his works were for piano or chamber groups, but he has also written two operas. Around 2010, Wolosoff returned to performing on the piano, often playing his own works. In 2011, he released the live album Many Worlds. The 2019 recording of Wolosoff's Cello Concerto by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra made the top ten on Billboard magazine's classical chart. In 2023, Wolosoff issued the album Memento on the Avie label, featuring his own piano compositions.
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