Blog Posts - Yehudi Wyner

Philharmonic to welcome top composer

4/29/2014

Youngstown News, April 24, 2014 — “The Warren Philharmonic Orchestra will welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner — the husband of WPO conductor Susan Davenny Wyner — at Sunday’s season-ending concert.

Titled ‘Spring in Paris,’ the concert will feature the premiere of Yehudi Wyner’s ‘Maze,’ which will feature young solo violinists from the WPO’s Strings of Joy program. The young musicians helped Yehudi compose the piece during his visit to Warren in February.

Yehudi will attend the concert to demonstrate a few secrets about ‘Maze’ before it is performed.”

Yehudi Wyner’s Life in Music: a Composer with Piano Hands

3/17/2014

Radio Open Source, February 25, 2014 — “Yehudi Wyner is an approachable guy in a forbidding field: contemporary ‘serious’ music. He gives us an opening here to ask where new sounds come from. In his case new music comes out of a sort of compost of the canon, from Bach to Bartok, and then everything else he’s heard over 80 years, from his father’s Yiddish art songs to boogie-woogie and gospel music. ‘Somehow it registers in the brain and has an effect,’ he says of the past. The other big thing you’ll be hearing from Yehudi Wyner is that his music has its very bodily beginning in his hands. It’s a physical, almost gymnastic test of what ten fingers can do, want to do, find themselves doing....”

Generations of Composers: Yehudi Wyner on his father, Lazar Weiner

7/15/2013

Yiddish Book Center, July 12, 2013 — “Lazar Weiner’s son, Yehudi Wyner, was born in Calgary, Alberta and raised in New York City. Like his father, Yehudi demonstrated early signs of musical talent. He studied music at Juilliard, Yale, and Harvard and became an eminent pianist and composer. He has written numerous instrumental and vocal works, including his Friday Evening Service. Yehudi has taught at several universities, most notably Yale and Brandeis. Here he reflects on the life and work of his father.”

When the Turnau Opera Players reigned in Woodstock

9/18/2012

Woodstock Times, September 16, 2012 — Of the many important creative forces to grace the company perhaps the most spectacular was Yehudi Wyner, one of the more acclaimed composers alive in America today, although his stewardship was indeed one of many happy accidents to boon the enterprise.

Critic’s picks: Classical music

2/6/2012

Boston Globe, February 5, 2012 — Among the notable upcoming chamber events are ... a Boston Jewish Music Festival concert devoted to the Yiddish art songs of Lazar Weiner, directed from the piano by his son, composer Yehudi Wyner (March 4).

Yehudi Wyner to perform his music with the Brooklyn Art Song Society

1/16/2012

Brooklyn Art Song Society, January 13, 2012 — The second season of the Society’s smash-success new music series will feature the works of Pulitzer-prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner paired with masterworks by Barber, Brahms, and Shostakovich.

Artists: Melissa Fogarty, soprano; Paul An, bass; Michael Brofman, Piano;Michael Rose, piano; Tema Watstien, violin; Mariel Roberts; cello

Special Guests: Dominique Labelle, soprano; Yehudi Wyner, piano

Artist: Brooklyn Art Song Society
Tour: In Context: Yehudi Wyner
Date: Friday, February 24th 2012
Time: 8:00pm
City: Brooklyn
Venue: Bargemusic
Address: Fulton Ferry Landing

Songs of the Poets, in Chamber Settings

5/26/2011

New York Times, May 26, 2011‎ — Yehudi Wyner’s accessible, amusing “Mad Tea-Party,” a setting of a scene from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” closed the concert, with Ms. Slywotzky playing an astute Alice, Mr. Blumberg as the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Murphree as the March Hare. Here the concert’s palette expanded somewhat: the singers and Ms. Kampmeier were joined by Harumi Rhodes, violinist; Katherine Cherbas, cellist; and Jennifer Grim, flutist. They gave the music a bright, lively reading.

Woodlands Celebrates Students' Talents in Art, Music

5/15/2011

Patch, May 15, 2011 — Under the direction of senior Kaitlin Donnelly of Winnetka, the 10-member a capella group, “Microscope,” will perform a number of their competition pieces, including Shir Ha-Shirim by Yehudi Wyner and Faith is the Bird That Feels the Light by Elizabeth Alexander, which earned the group a Gold rating award at the National Heritage Festival competition. The combined choirs and orchestra will end the evening with Adiemus, from Songs of Sanctuary by Karl Jenkins.

Yehudi Wyner — The Intimacy of Creativity

4/6/2011

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his Piano Concerto, "Chiavi in mano", Yehudi Wyner (b.1929) is one of America's most versatile musicians. His compositions include over 80 works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo voice and solo instruments, piano, chorus, and music for the theater, as well as liturgical services for worship.

“Give Thanks”: A premiere and inspiration

11/8/2010

Harvard Arts Beat, November 8th, 2010 — As one who has had the transformative experience of studying in Harvard’s unique chamber music course Music 180 withYehudi Wyner and Daniel Stepner, I am happy to report on what the Boston Globe called the “keenly anticipated” premiere of Yehudi Wyner’s composition, Give Thanks for All Things for orchestra and chorus. The work had its world premiere on Friday, November 5 and Saturday, November 6 at Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory performed by the Cantata Singers and Ensemble and conducted by David Hoose, music director of the Cantata Singers. Give Thanks for All Things is based on two Psalms, poems by Richard Wilbur and Walt Whitman, a passage from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and the Breton fisherman’s prayer, “Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.”