UB Choral Conductor Rosenbaum to Receive Honorary Doctorate from Queens College

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Harold Rosenbaum, conductor of the University at Buffalo choruses and one of the most critically acclaimed choral conductors of our time, will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Queens College on June 2, during the college's 87th commencement.

Rosenbaum, associate professor of music at UB, received his undergraduate and master's degrees at Queens College and taught at The Juilliard School and other universities before joining the faculty here.

He was the 2010 winner of the ASCAP Victor Herbert Award, given in recognition of his contribution to the choral repertory, and his service to American composers and their music. In 2008, Rosenbaum received Laurel Leaf Award from the American Composers' Alliance in recognition of "distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music," an award that had previously gone to the Juilliard String Quartet, Leopold Stokowski and composer/conductors Leonard Slatkin and George Szell.

Rosenbaum has collaborated with leading orchestras, composers, actors and stage directors throughout the United States and Europe, but is best known as founder, artistic director and conductor of two premier choral groups.

One is the award-winning, internationally celebrated New York Virtuoso Singers, which Rosenbaum founded in 1988 and which is today America's leading exponent of contemporary choral music. The NYVS is regularly invited to perform with leading orchestras and at prestigious institutions such as The Tanglewood Music Festival and The Juilliard School and has premiered more than 250 works by major composers.

The group has won the prestigious ASCAP-Chorus America "Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music" three times, and has received Chorus America's "American Choral Works Performance Award." It appears on 15 commercial CDs and its performance of Andrew Imbrie's Requiem received a Grammy nomination in 2000 and was voted by Fanfare as Critic's Choice, Best of Year.

The second is Rosenbaum's critically acclaimed Canticum Novum Singers, one of New York's premiere choirs, now in its 38th season, which has presented the music of all periods, with a special focus on early music in more than 450 American concerts and on four European tours.

He also is the artistic director and conductor of the Society for Universal Sacred Music and director of the Harold Rosenbaum Choral Series for G. Schirmer Inc., a series established in recognition of his leadership and interpretation and performance of contemporary music. He also is the editor-in-chief of http://www.ThatNewMusicLibrary.com, a new contemporary music site whose mission is to bring unpublished contemporary music of exceptional quality to a wide audience.

A tireless champion of contemporary choral composers and American composers in particular, Rosenbaum has created an annual choral composition competition, commissioned 25 works, conducted more than 300 world premieres (including works by Ravel, Schoenberg, Schnittke, Carter, Henze, Berio, Perle and Harbison) and has recorded contemporary choral music for SONY Classical, Albany, CRI, Bridge, Koch International, Capstone, and DRG.