Paul Frucht

Composer/Artistic Planning

Paul frucht

Hailed as a “composer with a career to follow” by the Ridgefield Press, Paul Frucht is an American composer whose music has been acclaimed for its “sense of lyricism, driving pulse, and great urgency” (WQXR) and “excellent orchestration” (Ridgefield Press). His music has been commissioned and performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Atlantic Music Festival Orchestra, Chelsea Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Weill-Cornell Music and Medicine Orchestra, Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, Asian American New Music Institute, Euclid Quartet, LONGLEASH Trio, New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, Utah Arts Festival, and the Eastern Music Festival among numerous other performing ensembles and organizations.

The upcoming 2019-2020 season is highlighted by performances by the Ulysses Quartet at the Buffalo Chamber Music Society and on the Mostly Music Series, the premiere of a new work for violin and piano by Alice Ivy-Pemberton, the premiere of Acadian Vista by the Minnesota Orchestra, and the premiere of an orchestral song cycle to be written for bass-baritone Kenneth Kellogg, commissioned by Yuga Cohler and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra.

Paul has been the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Brian H. Israel Prize from the Society of New Music, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, Juilliard’s Palmer Dixon, Arthur Friedman, and Gena Raps Prizes, the American Composers Orchestra’s 2016 Audience Choice Award and has been recognized for his work by the American Modern Ensemble, the Nashville Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Red Note New Music Festival, Chelsea Symphony, and Periapsis Music and Dance. Paul prioritizes cultural engagement in his music and artistic leadership activities. In addition to his position as artistic director of the Charles Ives Music Festival at the Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra, these goals have been realized through his role as the organizer for the 2016 Danbury Concert Across America to End Gun Violence, his representation of the Juilliard School and the United States at the Kyoto International Music Festival, and through his work, Dawn, which was written in memory of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal, Dawn Hochsprung. The work has received over 15 performances and has been heard around the United States. He has also appeared for interviews with the Hartford Courant, “Fifteen” Questions, and CT NPR and his writing has appeared in NewMusicBox, an online publication.

A passionate educator of all ages, he has been a faculty member at New York University’s Steinhardt School since 2015 and before that was a music theory teaching fellow in Juilliard’s College Division and an instructor in Juilliard’s Pre-College Division. From 2014-15, he was composer-in-residence at the piano Sonoma Music Festival for amateur adult musicians and in 2015, founded the Chamber Music Intensive, for both children and adults, which is now part of the Charles Ives Music Festival. He was also the Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence for the 2017-18 season. Paul received his doctoral of musical arts and master of music degrees at the Juilliard School and a B.M. from New York University. His two primary teachers have been Robert Beaser and Justin Dello Joio..