Osvaldo Golijov - Life and Career

Life and Career

Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.

Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of a lifetime of experience with various types of music. His Romanian Jewish parents exposed him to the traditional Klezmer music and liturgical music of their faith. Growing up and going to public school in Argentina showed him the many musical styles of his family's adopted country, including the tango. Once Golijov traveled abroad to continue his studies, the influences of other people and other styles became part of him. What is considered so remarkable about his musical language is that, rather than a pastiche of styles, it is wholly cohesive. It is thought of as vibrant and alive, growing and changing as he does.

Golijov's mother was a piano teacher, his father, a physician. He was raised "surrounded by chamber classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Ástor Piazzolla," according to his official website. He studied piano at the local conservatory in La Plata and studied composition with Gerardo Gandini.

In 1983, Golijov moved to Israel, where he studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy. Three years later, he moved to the United States of America with his wife, Silvia. There he studied with American composer George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania before receiving his doctorate.

Golijov is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Vilcek Prize, among other awards and commissions. He collaborates closely with conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya; vocalists Luciana Souza and Biella de Costa; cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Alisa Weilerstein, Maya Beiser and Matt Haimovitz; the kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor and percussionist Jamey Haddad; ensembles including the Atlanta Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Silk Road Ensemble and eighth blackbird; the artist Gronk, playwright David Henry Hwang, and directors Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Sellars. He has been composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Merkin Hall in New York, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Music Alive series, Marlboro Music School and Festiva, Ravinia Festival, and several other festivals. In 2010, he composed a commissioned work for 35 American orchestras titled Sidereus, honoring the seventeenth century Italian astronomer Galileo. and dedicated to an industry official Henry Fogel, who was once described by scholar Norman Lebrecht as "a suit once hired by the Arts Council to abolish London orchestras..."

Questions of musical plagiarism were leveled at Golijov after Tom Manoff, a composer and critic, and Brian McWhorter, a trumpeter, discovered that Sidereus consists mainly of music from the Michael Ward-Bergeman composition Barbeich. Alex Ross of the New Yorker reviewed both scores and wrote "To put it bluntly, “Sidereus” is “Barbeich” with additional material attached." A consortium of thirty-five orchestras paid Golijov $75,000 to write a 20-minute work; a fee supplemented by a $50,000 grant approved by the then board of the League of American Orchestras. The final work that Golijov produced and gave to the consortium of orchestras is a 9-minute work. Golijov also used that same musical material in his 2009 composition Radio. Golijov responded to these questions by explaining that he composed the original musical material jointly with Ward-Bergeman, and used it with permission. He also cited Monteverdi, Schubert, and Mahler as other composers who have shared existing musical material to create new music.

Golijov is Loyola Professor of Music at the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1991. He is also on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory. He has three children.