Joseph Fennimore

About

Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize winning critic, called Joseph Fennimore "one of this country's finest composers," and listening to his work it's easy to hear why. The Manhattan born pianist and composer has built a body of work centered on piano and chamber music that manages to be technically demanding and chromatically complex while never losing its roots in the Western tonal tradition. His music has been performed and broadcast worldwide, with pieces entering the repertories of the Metropolitan Opera Studio and the New York City Ballet. Fennimore's style is hard to pin down in the best way. Works like Cathay and Sea of Sand reach into Chinese and Middle Eastern idioms, while his reworking of Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto, premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under James Levine, stays warmly romantic. There's also a playful wit running through his output, best captured in the satirical song cycle Berlitz: Introduction to French. He has taught piano at Princeton University and continues to teach privately in Albany, New York.