Paul Alan Levi

Biography

Levi received a B.A. in music at Oberlin College and later received his M.M. and D.M.A at Juilliard while studying with composition teachers Hall Overton and Vincent Persichetti.

He has taught at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Rutgers University, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Lehman College, and Baruch College, and has been the composer in residence at Wolf Trap Farm Park, Portland State University, and the White Plains High School.

Levi has won numerous awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grand Prize for Opera from the National Music Theater Network, Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Composers Alliance Recording Award, and grants from the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. He lived for a year in Munich on a DAAD Grant and has had residencies at several artist colonies.

Levi’s commissions include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Choral Society, New Amsterdam singers, New York Chamber Symphony, Chamber Music Northwest, Robert DeCormier Singers, and the Music Today Series. Performers of his music include conductors Pierre Boulez, Jesús López-Cobos, Robert DeCormier, Clara Longstreth, Gustav Meier, and Gerard Schwarz; pianist Justin Kolb; and singers Margaret Ahrens, David Bender, Adam Klein, Antonia Lavanne, Douglas Perry, Neva Pilgrim, Lucy Shelton, Sheila Schonbrun, and James Archie Worley, as well as Cantors Richard Botton and Mark Lipson.

Publishers include Becatone Music, Lawson-Gould Music Publishers, Margun Music, Merion Music, Mobart Music Publications, and New Jewish Music Press. Recordings can be heard on Albany Records (Acts of Love; Bye, Bye Toots), Centaur Records (Mark Twain Suite), and CRI (Five Progressions for Three Instruments).

Musical style

Levi composes in a wide variety of styles and genres, never pigeonholing himself as a composer of a specific type of music. His vocal and choral works are notable for their clear projection of content and meaning of the text without compromising the quality of the music. In addition to his many works written for professional performers, Levi has composed a group of pieces that were commissioned as presents for major birthdays of amateur musicians, including cellist James Wolfensohn.

Levi writes, “The most important thing I learned from Hall Overton was to write with a comedian’s sense of timing, even in non-comedic works.” His pieces feature a combination of lyricism and drama, often with an underlying or overt sense of humor. His most significant works, both for chorus, orchestra, and soloists, include the comedic Mark Twain Suite as well as his Passover Oratorio, Dayenu, which commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and an escape from a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The New Music Connoisseur has written, “Mr. Levi has a natural flair for theatrical choral music.” Like many composers, Mr. Levi has written memorial works, but also has composed a piece celebrating birth, “In the Womb,” for chorus with electronic accompaniment.

Levi is also a pianist and conductor. He has accompanied many songs by 20th-century composers and conducted his own works as well as musicals, operettas, and the works of Murray Hidary ( [1] ). Levi and his wife, Cathy Waldman, have performed as the Four-Hand Band.

Choral works

Poems by Sally Fisher For chorus and chamber orchestra

Poems by Sally Fisher For chorus and chamber orchestra (Albany Records)

From In the Beginning… (2000) Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi Chorus with electronic accompaniment

Based on poems by Ann Chernow and Burt Chernow For chorus and piano (Lawson-Gould Music Publishers)

A Passover Oratorio For tenor and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)

Poems by Toni Mergentime Levi For chorus and chamber orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)

Text by Robert Burns For chorus and chamber orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)

Psalms 86 and 19 For 8 voices or double chorus, a cappella

Co-composer: Rabbi Mark Lipson For cantor, adult and children’s choirs,and quintet or chamber orchestra (New Jewish Music Press)

For chorus, tenor solo and orchestra (Lawson-Gould Music Publishers)

Chamber Works

Solo vocal

Orchestral

Piano Solo

Opera

Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi An opera parable in seven scenes

A serio-comic opera in one act Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi For 12 singers and chamber orchestra

Birthday commissions

Title themes for television

Music for television and films