URJ Books And Music :: Isaacson, Michael

Founding Artistic Director of The Israel Pops Orchestra, and the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, Michael Isaacson enjoys a distinguished career as a composer, conductor, producer, and educator with over 500 Jewish and secular musical compositions published, including instrumental, vocal, sacred and secular arrangements, editions and educational works, the two volume, five hundred page Michael Isaacson Songbook, and over 50 produced CDs and album recordings. In 2006, he was honored by the American Society of Jewish Music, Hebrew Union College, and the Jewish Theological Seminary as one of the ten of the most influential living composers of Jewish music. A frequent guest lecturer in Jewish Studies on University campuses, he has completed a book entitled Jewish Music as Midrash that will soon be published. Born in Brooklyn, New York, April 22, 1946, he received his early education at Yeshiva Rambam, James Madison & Sheepshead Bay High Schools. After earning a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Hunter College, a Master of Arts in Music Composition with Robert Starer from Brooklyn College, keyboard studies at the Juilliard School with John Mehegan, ethnomusicology with Israel Adler at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he went on to study with Samuel Adler and Warren Benson at the Eastman School of Music ultimately earning his Ph.D. there in Composition.

In 1973 Dr. Isaacson taught theory, composition, orchestration and conducted the Festival Chorus at SUNY Fredonia. In 1974 he was simultaneously appointed instructor at Case Western, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Music Director of Tifereth Israel Temple in Cleveland, Ohio. There, at the request of Rabbi Daniel Silver, son of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, Isaacson composed new music each week for an alternative woodwind quintet and choir morning worship service exploring new modes of contemporary synagogue prayer and produced the Temple's first album of Jewish music The Loom and the Cloth. He met and married educator Susan Weisblatt and in 1976 moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music for the media.

In Los Angeles, from 1976 -1990, while holding adjunct faculty positions at Loyola Marymount, Cal State-Long Beach, and UCLA and H.U.C., Dr. Isaacson composed and conducted original scores and arranged for many well known television series including The Bob Hope Show, John Williams & The Boston Pops with Joan Baez, Rich Man, Poor Man II, Little Women, Bionic Woman, Hawaii Five-0, Time Travelers, and the daytime dramas Loving and Days of Our Lives. His music has also been heard on The Nanny, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the feature films The Passover Plot and Liberty Heights. As an arranger, orchestrator and conductor for feature films, he has had the pleasure of assisting composers John Williams, Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Walter Scharf, and Charles Fox.

Dr. Isaacson has conducted, toured and produced new recordings of symphonic music with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tel Aviv Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Vermont Symphony and Chorus, the Bulgarian National Symphony, the Czech Chamber Orchestra and the Israel String Quartet. His recordings with The Hollywood Pops, which he also musically directs, may be heard on the Sony label.

Music albums composed, orchestrated and/or conducted for the Los Angeles Jewish community include: Regeneration and Legacy with Cantor Nathan Lam at Stephen S. Wise Temple, Guardians of the Heart, Hope For the Future and Kol Truah with Cantor Jay Frailich at University Synagogue, From Sinai to Sinai with Cantor Meir Finklestein at Sinai Temple, and Windows; The Songs of Rabbi Moshe Rothblum with Cantor David Silverstein, of Temple Adat Ariel. He has produced the first collection for the new Jewish Music Group CD label American Jewish Summer. He frequently collaborated with the Cantor's Assembly Executive Director Hazzan Samuel Rosenbaum z"l.

When Hebrew Union College awarded Prime Minister of Israel Yitzchak Shamir an honorary doctorate in November 1991, Dr. Isaacson was selected as music director for the convocation and commissioned to compose a large musical work in Prime Minister Shamir's honor. The resulting dramatic work for men, and children's voices, brass and percussion is entitled Psalms for a Leader.

Titles featuring Isaacson, Michael

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