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photo: Fred Miller
TODD GOODMAN, composer
TODD GOODMAN has been described as “one of America’s promising young composers.” His works are performed all over the world by a wide variety of players, including principal members of many major symphony orchestras—Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Singapore, Iceland, and Seattle Symphonies. Goodman currently serves as the resident composer for the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center located outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Goodman served as resident composer for the Altoona Symphony Orchestra (2002-2006), the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra (2005-2006), and the Beaver Valley Philharmonic (2006-2007). As an advocate of arts education, Goodman also serves as Lincoln Park's Artistic Education Director and teaches on the faculty of the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School. There he conducts the Lincoln Park Orchestra and teaches composition to some of Pennsylvania’s finest young musicians. As an educator, he was also recently chosen from 30,000 nominees as a quarter-finalist for the 2014 Grammy Award for Music Education.
Mr. Goodman’s awards and grants are numerous. Most recently, his opera Night of the Living Dead [2013] (with libretto by Stephen Catanzarite) won the 2014 American Prize for Theater Composition and was also selected as one of the 2013 Center for Contemporary Opera’s New Works Showcase. In 2011, Goodman's Trombone Concerto [2011] won the British Trombone Society Composition Award and his Tuba Concerto [2012] the 2012 North American Tuba Repertoire Initiative Commission for his which was also a finalist for the 2012 International Harvey Phillips Award for Excellence in Composition, and third place in the 2011 American Prize for Orchestral Composition for his Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra [2008]. Mr. Goodman has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work with the Altoona Symphony Orchestra, the American Music Center for his Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra, as well as grants from the University of Colorado Entrepreneurship Center for his work, Symphony No. 1 “Fields of Crimson” [2003]. Mr. Goodman has also won such notable prizes as the International Project Piccolo Rebirth 2007 Prize for his work Echos: prelude and dance [2007] for piccolo and piano, two prestigious Gold Farbe Awards from the University of Colorado film department for his scores to two short films Hypnotic Reverie and Light Autumn by writer/director Ryan McVeigh, and many ASCAPlus Awards.
Todd Goodman was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, in 1977. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in composition at the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Masters of Music degree in composition at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. ABD in theory and composition from Kent State University. He has also studied at L'ecole normale de musique in Paris, France, with the European American Musical Alliance and at the Aspen Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado. His principal composition teachers have been Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Tsontakis as well as David Stock, Frank Wiley, and Richard Toensing.
Todd Goodman’s available recordings include the February 2014, release by the Potenza Music Company of the piano version of his Tuba Concerto performed by Grammy-nominated tubist Aaron Tindall and pianist Margaret McDonald. A February 2010, release of River of Sorrows is also available on the Duquesne University Press CD Winds of Summer with the Duquesne University Wind Ensemble conducted by Robert Cameron. The world premiere of his Symphony No. 1 “Fields of Crimson” recorded by the Altoona Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro Nicholas Palmer, was released through Wrong Note Media, Inc. in July 2003, marking the 140th anniversary of the subject of this work, the battle of Gettysburg. New releases scheduled for the Fall of 2014 on the Potenza Music Company label include the University of South Florida Orchestra recording of his Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra with soloist Calvin Falwell and conductor William Weidrich. Being released on the Centaur Label, piccoloist Jon Robert Craft is including Goodman’s Echos: prelude and dance on his new album of new works for the piccolo. A 2014 recording of Todd Goodman’s Trombone Concerto is also being planned by British Trombone Society president, Brett Baker.
Mr. Goodman is also the founder and artistic director of the innovative contemporary art ensemble, Ensemble Immersion, currently in residence at the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center. The group combines music, dance, literature, film, visual arts, drama, set design, and creative audience interaction to create artistic experiences unlike any other.
Mr. Goodman now resides in Midland, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Katie, two sons, and their St. Bernard “Thelonious.”