Louis Karchin

Who is Louis Karchin?

Louis Karchin is an American composer, conductor and educator. He has composed over 60 works including unaccompanied and chamber music, symphonic works and opera. His music has been recognized by awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and he has received commissions from the Serge Koussevitzky, Fromm, and Barlow Foundations. His 70-minute chamber opera, Romulus, a setting of the Alexandre Dumas, père play, was premiered at the Peter B. Lewis Theatre of the Guggenheim Museum in May, 2007" and subsequently issued on a Naxos CD. Other major works include American Visions, a vocal-instrumental song-cycle on poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and a masque, Orpheus, based on a poem by Stanley Kunitz. Of the latter work, critic Jules Langert wrote of its San Francisco premiere, “The music seemed in constant flux, creating strong, richly textured sonorities….and brilliant splashes of color; this Orpheus floated on an incandescent fabric of sound.”" Mr. Karchin’s music is published by C. F. Peters Corporation and the American Composers Alliance.