Biography
Noam Faingold is a composer/performer/conductor based in London and NYC. Noam started playing rock guitar and drums at 12, eventually broadening his interests to classical and jazz composition and performance. Deeply immersed in all three traditions, his music has been praised as “…lyrical…”, “…exhilirating…”, and “…a tour-de-force…” by sources as varied as the New York Times, Anoushka Shankar for the BBC, Downbeat Magazine, Aamulehti (Finland) and others (see Press section for full stories).
Noam is currently finishing up an album of his music exploring chamber music and pop song-writing with his rock orchestra, the Burning City Orchestra (click here for a BCO preview). The album includes guest performances by Nonesuch records pianist/composer Timothy Andres and influential/inspirational electric bassist Reed Mathis (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Tea Leaf Green, Medeski, Martin and Wood). The BCO first received attention from the BBC for placing in the top 20 (out of 2,000 entries from 88 countries) in the BBC’s “Next Big Thing 2007” competition.
Other current projects include a sinfonia concertante for double bassist Kurt Muroki (Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center), chamber works for his NY Times acclaimed composer’s collective Circles and Lines and continuously writing and performing with his rock orchestra.
Recent performances of his music include the Tampere Philharmonic’s chamber music series (Finland), the Jönköping Sinfonietta (Sweden), Cadillac Moon Ensemble (NYC),Juventas New Music (Boston) the Bowdoin Festival’s Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, the OK Mozart festival, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Tulsa International Mayfest and New York City’s Le Poisson Rouge.
In 2011, he was named a Salzburg Seminar fellow in music on an Edward T. Cone fellowship and was a finalist for the 2011 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, as well as a 2010 BMI Young composer award.
Noam is the composer-in-residence at the Midtown School for the Performing Arts in Tulsa, OK and the composition Performing Assistant at the Bowdoin International Music festival where his music is performed, he conducts student chamber ensemble works and performs in the orchestra. He is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at King’s College London on a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Fellowship, with a teaching assistantship in music analysis.
Past commissions have come from the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, NYC’s Transit new music ensemble, violinist Dennis Kim (principal violin, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra), Jeff Cowen (principal viola, Tulsa Symphony Orchestra), Joe Bongiorno (double bass, The Knights, ex-New York City Opera, Mostly Mozart and American Composer’s Orchestra) and others.
As a conductor, Noam recently conducted the world premieres of Elliot Schwartz’s “Echo Variations: Remembering David” for mixed quartet and tape (Bowdoin Festival), and Matias Hancke de la Fuente’s “Inner Outer Secret” for soprano and string quartet (King’s College London). He has also conducted his arrangement of Webern’s notoriously challenging “Five Pieces for String Quartet” with his rock orchestra, as well as works by Ben Kapilow, Noah Meites, Eric Merten and his own chamber symphony, also with his rock orchestra. As a double bassist he has been the guest principal bassist of the London Medical Orchestra, London Youth Opera’s performance of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride, the world premiere of Erin Huelskamp’s chamber opera “The Year of the Serpent” with Boston-based new music ensemble Juventas. He has also played with New York’s One World Symphony, Manhattan Camerata, and Bowdoin Festival Orchestra. Noam currently freelances around London.
Noam is fortunate to count many great musical mentors in his life, including Samuel Adler, Kurt Muroki, George Benjamin, Silvina Milstein, Dennis Kim, Ezequiel Viñao, Claude Baker, Reiko Fueting, Joe Bongiorno and Roger Price.
