Louis Karchin has been a prominent figure in music for over four decades, composing over 110 works, conducting extensively, and co-founding such groups as the Harvard Group for New Music, the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM, and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. His music has been praised for its “fearless eloquence” (The New Yorker), “bare-nerve intensity” (NY Times), and “coruscating beauty” (San Francisco Chronicle). Critics have lately remarked on Karchin’s stylistic breadth, with Fanfare critic James H. North writing that his opera, Jane Eyre, is “harmonically adventurous, but admits a font of grand lyricism most appropriate to Charlotte Brontë’s late Sturm and Drang novel.” Reviewer Robert Carl hailed his recent Bridge Records release as “a tribute to Karchin’s resilience, creative voice, and formidable technique. Here is a composer who is still looking forward but has not given up on the past.”
Karchin’s music includes three operas, vocal-instrumental song cycles, and numerous orchestral, chamber, and solo works. Recordings are on Naxos, Bridge, New World, New Focus, and Albany labels, and his music is published by Wise Music-Edition Peters and the American Composers Alliance. He has received recognition for his work from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (three awards), the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitzky, Barlow and Fromm Music Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts (four awards), and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (three awards). Some major compositions include his Chamber Symphony, presented at Tanglewood in 2011, with the composer conducting, and American Visions, his extended vocal-instrumental song cycle, on which Karchin collaborated closely with the work’s poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko; the Da Capo Chamber Players subsequently toured with it in Russia. In 2024-5, there were two full-length concerts of Mr. Karchin’s music, and the New York Classical Players presented four performances of his new orchestral work, The Four Seasons of Bernini.
Mr. Karchin studied at the Eastman School of Music and Harvard University, and in 1971 and ‘72 was a Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. His teachers included Samuel Adler, Fred Lerdahl, Earl Kim and Leon Kirchner, and at Tanglewood, Gunther Schuller and Bruno Maderna. He also studied conducting with Leon Barzin. In 2018, the Eastman School of Music initiated an archive of Mr. Karchin’s manuscripts and career; in 2022, the school honored him with a Centennial Award for lifetime achievement in music. He is Professor of Music at New York University, where he designed and initiated a graduate program in music composition for the Faculty of Arts and Science Music Department; the program has produced such now-nationally known composers as Felipe Lara and Paula Matthusen, among others.
Mr. Karchin lives in New Jersey with his wife, Julie Sirota Karchin; they have two daughters, Marisa and Lindsay.
Short Bio
Louis Karchin has been a prominent figure in music for over four decades, composing over 110 works, conducting extensively, and co-founding such groups as the Harvard Group for New Music, the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM, and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. His music has been praised for its “fearless eloquence” (The New Yorker), “bare-nerve intensity” (NY Times), and “coruscating beauty” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Karchin’s works include three operas, vocal-instrumental song cycles, and numerous orchestral, chamber, and solo pieces. Recordings are on Naxos, Bridge, New World, New Focus, and Albany labels, and his music is published by Wise Music-Edition Peters and the American Composers Alliance. He has received recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitzky, Barlow, and Fromm Music Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2018, the Eastman School of Music initiated an archive of Mr. Karchin’s manuscripts and career; in 2022, the school honored him with a Centennial Award for lifetime achievement in music. He is Professor of Music at New York University.