Joshua Rosenblum

Education

Rosenblum attended Marietta High School in his hometown of Marietta, Ohio, and spent summers at the Interlochen Arts Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1983 at the age of 20, and proceeded directly to graduate school at the Yale School of Music, where he studied piano with Ward Davenny and Donald Currier. Among his composition teachers were Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, and Frank Lewin (Composition for Film). He earned his M.M. in Piano Performance in 1985. Rosenblum is now a faculty member at Yale, where he has taught Composing for Musical Theater since 2006.

Musical theater

Rosenblum composed the score for the Off-Broadway show Fermat's Last Tango, a musical version of the story of Andrew Wiles, the Princeton mathematician who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics. The show was a collaboration beween Rosenblum and his wife, novelist, librettist and singer Joanne Sydney Lessner, who wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics with Rosenblum. Fermat’s Last Tango ran in New York at the York Theatre Company, and received its international premiere at Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon. Rosenblum and Lessner also collaborated on Einstein's Dreams (based on the best-selling novel by Alan Lightman), Garbo and Me, based on the life of screen legend Greta Garbo, and The Haunted Hotel, which was commissioned by the Signature Theatre in Virginia as part of their New American Voices Project. Einstein’s Dreams was given a concert performance at Symphony Space in 2009 starring John Bolton and Kate Shindle, and also received performances at Teatro da Trindade. Rosenblum wrote the songs for Quincy Long's play The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite, which ran Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company.

In 2005, in response to the re-election of President George W. Bush, Rosenblum created the satirical musical revue Bush is Bad, which ran for a year and a half at New York’s Triad Theater, and spawned additional productions in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Charleston, SC. In its original iteration, it starred Kate Baldwin, Michael McCoy, and Neal Mayer, who each portrayed multiple figures in the Bush administration. Also along political lines, Rosenblum wrote book, music, and lyrics for Mark Felt, Superstar, which tells the story of the Watergate scandal from the perspective of "Deep Throat," the FBI official who was the secret source for journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post. Mark Felt, Superstar had performances at the Triad in April 2015. In February 2016, the Central School of Speech and Drama in London will present a musical revue of Rosenblum's songs, entitled "Love is Not a Science."

Concert music

Rosenblum has composed extensively for the concert hall, and his works can be heard on two recordings, Impetuosities and Sundry Notes, both on the Albany Records label. In 2009, Rosenblum founded The Pit Stop Players, a chamber group composed of New York freelance musicians. The group focuses on contemporary classical music, including Rosenblum’s own compositions, but also plays pieces from a wide variety of other genres, including rock, jazz, fusion, opera, and film music. The group's concerts have been critically acclaimed. A 2012 performance featured Rosenblum's original work, "A Young Person's Guide to the Pit Stop Players." The piece, an homage to Britten's similarly titled "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," was narrated by actress/director Cynthia Nixon.

Music journalism

Rosenblum has contributed concert and CD reviews to Opera News magazine on a regular basis since 1999. He has also written for Newsday, Stagebill, and The Charleston Post and Courier (as Overview Critic for the Spoleto Festival USA).