Light and dark elements are often tightly interlaced in Raymond J. Lustig’s eclectic and highly expressive music. His work has just been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with the prestigious Charles Ives Fellowship. His orchestral composition UNSTUCK—inspired by dementia and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five—was the 2007 winner of the ASCAP Foundation’s Rudolf Nissim Prize. His opera-theater work THE DOCTORS’ WARD—based on the tragic story of the nineteenth-century obstetrician who discovered the cause of one of history’s worst childbed fever epidemics—was selected for a recent workshop with legendary director Jonathan Miller and American Opera Projects. New York’s Metropolis Ensemble has chosen him as their 2010-11 Wet Ink Composer, and will base their season’s programming around his music. His works have been performed by American Opera Projects, the Juilliard Symphony, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Bowling Green Philharmonia, Blind Ear Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Avian Orchestra, Duo Noire, Orchestra Insonica, COUNTER)INDUCTION, and Opera on Tap. His music has been presented at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York’s Symphony Space and 92nd Street Y, the Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Norfolk and Caramoor summer music festivals, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute, and the Juilliard Beyond the Machine Festival. Avian Orchestra has recorded his You Catching? for ensemble and narrator, and this year the Bowling Green Philharmonia will be releasing its recording of his UNSTUCK for orchestra.
Lustig’s music has been used for dance at the New York Choreographic Institute, Yass Hakoshima Movement Theater, the Juilliard School’s Composers and Choreographers concert, and Barnard College’s Spring Dances concert. He has collaborated with choreographers Peter Quantz, Melissa Barak, Yass Hokoshima, and Brynt Beitman.
His teachers have included John Corigliano, Robert Beaser, Samuel Adler, Derek Bermel, Philip Lasser, Conrad Cummings, Sebastian Currier, Jonathan Kramer, and Shirish Korde.
Born in Tokyo and raised in Queens, New York, Lustig received his B.A. from Holy Cross College, where his interests were divided between piano, composition, and biology. In a previous career, he was a published molecular biology researcher at Columbia University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Since then, he earned his Master of Music degree in composition from the Juilliard School, where he now serves on the faculty and is completing his doctorate.Create or get your
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