Herschel Garfein (born January 17, 1958) is an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, librettist, stage director, and faculty member of the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University, where he teaches Script Analysis. Garfein is widely known for his libretto written for Robert Aldridge's '' Elmer Gantry,'' which won two 2012 Grammy Awards including "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" won by Garfein and Aldridge. He also collaborated with Aldridge on the oratorio ''Parables''. In his compositions for the musical ''Suenos'' he found an inspiration in Hispanic rhythms. Garfein also composed the music and libretto for an opera based on the Tom Stoppard play '' Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead''. Garfein's parents are actress Carroll Baker and film director Jack Garfein, a Czechoslovak Jew, who survived the Holocaust. His sister is actress Blanche Baker. He is married to Vicki Bernstein, and has two children, twins, Hadassa and Lev.

Awards and honors

* 54th Annual Grammy Awards, 2011: Grammy Award, "Best Contemporary Classical Composition," with Robert Aldridge, for "Elmer Gantry." Herschel Garfein, Librettist. * 60th Annual Grammy Awards, 2017: Grammy Award, " Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album" for " Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom," by Ted Nash Big Band. Herschel Garfein, Producer, with Kabir Sehgal and

Douglas Brinkley Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is the history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Histori ...

References

American male composers New York University faculty American opera librettists American people of Czech-Jewish descent Jewish American composers Place of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American composers 21st-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 1958 births 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American Jews {{US-composer-20thC-stub