REDISCOVER Yehudi Wyner…and Our Passover Music Giveaway Returns

Update: Our Passover Giveaway promotion has ended.

Yehudi Wyner is one of America’s most decorated composers. Among his more than 100 compositions for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voices and instruments are several profound meditations on Jewish experience. This last point might come as surprise for someone who once remarked about his early career: “I was not at all concerned with Jewish music.”

Like many of the budding Jewish composers of his era, Wyner spent a summer at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Santa Susana, California—an idea to which he at first “reluctantly acceded” but later described as “an amazing indoctrination.” Until that point he had been relatively apathetic toward his Jewish identity. The Brandeis-Bardin experience changed that, as indicated by the several works recorded by the Milken Archive. These include his much-lauded Friday Evening Service and Torah Service, Passover Offering, and The Mirror, a chamber suite to a play by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Additionally, Wyner’s consummate skills as a pianist are featured on dozens of Yiddish and Hebrew art songs composed by his father, Lazar Weiner.

For decades, Wyner has been a fixture on Boston’s music scene. Through his teaching at Brandeis University and Tanglewood (as well as visiting appointments at Harvard) and multiple commissions by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (including his Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, Chiavi in Mano) and other area ensembles, he maintains a presence significant enough that one Boston Globe writer referred to him as “the city’s all-around musical mensch-in-residence.”

Wyner’s legacies for Boston and Jewish music will converge tomorrow night in a special concert presentation by the Jewish Arts Collaborative. Titled “A Celebration of Yehudi Wyner,” the concert will feature a range of works from Wyner’s oeuvre, and include a post-concert Q&A with noted critic Lloyd Scwartz. If you’re in Boston, don’t miss it. If you’re not in Boston, celebrate Yehudi Wyner anytime at the Milken Archive.

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Concert "A Celebration of Yehudi Wyner" honors the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer in a very special program.

Composer Visit Yehudi Wyner's artist profile to read more about his origins, watch oral history videos, and more.

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