Bio
New York City composer Bruce Lazarus characterizes his extensive catalog of instrumental and vocal music as "diverse, concise, architectural, contemporary, and in turn meditative, energetic, humorous, moody, and exuberant.” His works have often been inspired by astronomical imagery, woodlands and mountain trails, and lifetime involvement in the worlds of theater and dance. His albums, Galaxy Mix, Musical Explorations of the Messier Star Clusters and Nebulae and Works for Solo Piano, are available for streaming or purchase online. His scores are published at Universal Editions and SwirlyMusic, and his music has been aired on WQXR, WBAI (Hour of the Wolf, The Positive Mind), WQXR (Pipedreams), WKCR, Concertzender Amsterdam, WWFM (Between the Keys with Jed Distler), and most recently
Lazarus’ soundtracks for animated videos (see Animation page) in collaboration with visual artist Robert Martens have earned acclaim from over a dozen international film festivals including Animation Celebration 2020 (Best Experimental Music Video), Environmental Film Festival (Best Sound & Music), and New York City Indie Film Festival.
Bruce Lazarus earned his B.M. and M.M. degrees in music composition
at Juilliard where he studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and Andrew Thomas, and later he earned his Ph.D in music theory and composition
at Rutgers University. He was also a private student of noted piano teacher
and composer Donald Waxman.
Lazarus is the founder and sole administrator of the popular Facebook group Astronomy and the Arts, and he holds an artist-level membership in the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) where he is presently
Director of Membership.
Lazarus has served as composer-in-residence for dance at Northwestern University and New World School of the Arts in Miami, music director/composer for numerous mainstage theater productions at Marymount Manhattan College, longterm company pianist for Dance Theater of Harlem and music coordinator for Mark Morris Dance Group, with guest residencies at Yaddo, Storm King Music Festival, and ArtsAhimsa.
Bruce Lazarus is currently Music Director for the Joffrey Ballet School (see article).
on composing music
"At age 11, the music I loved most was Francis Lai’s then-current wordless theme from the French film A Man and a Woman, and Aaron Copland’s El Salon Mexico; the movie music because it used the harmonic vocabulary of Debussy and was easy to sing, the Copland because it had more rhythmic vitality than any rock music I knew. At 14, realizing that building music interested me more than performing it, I chose to become primarily a composer rather than a pianist, an easy teenage decision which initiated a complicated, life-long search for a personal musical voice.
"My music is diverse, concise, melodic, rhythmically driven, architectural, cheerfully dissonant, contemporary, at times subtly influenced by jazz and rock, and in turns meditative, humorous, moody, impressionistic, and exuberant. I think I've truly communicated, musically, when I overhear someone casually hum or sing something I’ve written.
I'm interested in science and especially astronomy, and often use astronomical imagery for my more descriptive works.
Discovering a potentially memorable musical idea is like discovering gold, and there's nothing I like more than when a new idea – a melody, a short theme, an intriguing rhythm or novel harmonic progression – captures my imagination and sets me on an all-consuming search for all its permutations and possibilities."