RAYMOND LUSTIG

Raymond Lustig, currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School, where he studies composition with John Corigliano. Raymond Lustig has always been attracted to writing for dance.  The vibrant eclecticism, visual imagery, and straightforward expressivity of his music are often inspired by, and invite synergy with, physical movement.  His Durst, a collaboration with choreographer Brynt Beitman, was premiered in 2004 at New York's Alice Tully Hall, and the work was selected for reprise at Juilliard's Choreographic Honors concert that year.  His Through a Prism was set by Marie Yereniuk as part of Barnard College's Spring Dances concert in 2003.  These same qualities also propel his concert music.  The Juilliard Symphony premiered his orchestral work Unstuck, an intensely personal reaction to the progressive memory loss of dementia diseases.  The Avian Orchestra has released its recording of his four-movement work for ensemble and narrator, You Catching?, an allegory of a season of fishing, written in collaboration with Ana Berlin in memory of his fisherman grandfather.  The work was commissioned by the ensemble for a 2004 concert, and its premiere was Web-cast on the American Music Center's NewMusicBox.  His works have been performed by pianist Blair McMillen at the Caramoor Music Festival, the ensemble counter) induction, the Avian Orchestra, pianist Daniel Spiegel, and clarinetist Beth Wiemann. 

Ray Lustig is a winner of the Juilliard School's 2006 Orchestra Competition, and a recipient of the Irene Diamond Graduate Fellowship, the Roger Casey Scholarship, the Pia Gilbert Scholarship, and the Piser and Cartwright Scholarships, as well as numerous teaching fellowships.  His teachers have included Samuel Adler, Pia Gilbert, Philip Lasser, Sebastian Currier, Jonathan Kramer, Derek Bermel, Conrad Cummings, and Shirish Korde. 

In 2002, after a nearly decade-long foray into biological research at Columbia University, Ray Lustig returned his full-time focus to his lifelong passion for music.  He believes deeply in the importance of the arts to society, and seeks through his music, teaching, writing, and outreach projects to proliferate the vital richness and beauty that music can bring to humanity as a whole.

He wishes to thank the New York Choreographic Institute for this unique opportunity, Pia Gilbert and Richard Tanner for their generous help and mentorship, his creative collaborators Peter and Melissa for both their inspiration and their patience, and the ensemble members and the dancers for their intensely moving artistry.