Washington Musica Viva

Washington DC based composer Noam Faingold (b. 1984) is passionate about composing for and collaborating with traditional, multi-disciplinary, and cross-genre projects. His music has been praised as “…lyrical…”, “…exhilarating…”, and “…a tour-de-force of Jazz melded with Classical” by The New York Times, Anoushka Shankar for the BBC, Downbeat Magazine, and Gramophone.

Highlights include compositions for cellist Inbal Segev (Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center), oboist Rob Botti (New York Philharmonic)/International Double Reed Society, and pianist Peter Dugan (host of NPR’s From the Top), and collaborating with 20th century poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko‘s family, conductor Andrés Franco, Tulsa Signature Symphony and the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra on an elegy in the poet’s memory (Navona Records) and with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and the George Kaiser Family Foundation on “We Persist,” a virtual orchestra video piece for orchestras to play together while staying safely apart during COVID-19. Faingold has also served as an arranger/orchestrator for Baritone Lester Lynch‘s spirituals album “On My Journey” (Pentatone Records), the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey/Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra Beethoven project at the OK Mozart Festival, and composer Eli Marshall‘s film score for The Golden Era, recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Faingold currently teaches music at Baltimore City Public Schools and serves as Program Manager for DC nonprofit The MusicianShip’s Music Media program. He prepares students to succeed in writing music for performance settings through Oklahoma State University’s Community Music School as Composer in Residence and The University of Tulsa’s Composition Seminar for high school students (as Visiting Artist in Music Composition). Besides TU’s Composition Seminar, he created composition programs like Tulsa Community College’s multi-semester collaboration with Signature Symphony, and the composition program at The bART Center for Music, where he now serves as Educational Consultant, after having been director of the Barthelmes Conservatory college preparatory program. He has also given talks and guest lectures at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School, The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and many other institutions.

He works extensively as a mentor with arts organizations around the US like the Mid-America Arts Alliance (Artist Inc.), the Music Teachers National Association Oklahoma chapter, and Living Arts of Tulsa. He advocates for new music and inclusive representational programming, leadership, and educational opportunities as a member of the boards of directors and several committees at Chamber Music Tulsa, Signature Symphony, and Living Arts. Since 2015, he has curated the annual OK Electric festival of electroacoustic music at Living Arts as a platform for interrogating important social issues through the intersection of electronic and acoustic music.

Faingold has held fellowships through the Salzburg Global Seminar, The Bowdoin International Music Festival, and The Atlantic Music Festival, and holds a PhD in Music Composition from King’s College London funded by a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Fellowship.