Music Theory with Christopher B.

Christopher Buchenholz is an American composer whose orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works have been most favorably received in the United States and abroad. His compositions are best known for their extraordinary blend of traditional musical sound worlds, relentless counterpoint, intricate rhythmic aggregations, and innovative harmonic motion. His music has been described as "meta-tonal," incorporating tonal structures and tonally influenced relationships within fundamentally twelve-tone designs. Mr. Buchenholz' music reflects an intense and ongoing investigation of formal musical structures, created in a twelve-tone pitch-space, which itself is modeled after a more conventional, tonal pitch-space. This gives his music a familiar, yet strikingly new sound.Dr. Buchenholz studied at the High School of Music and Art, and studied composition at Carnegie-Mellon University with Lukas Foss and Leonardo Balada, and with Milton Babbitt at the Juilliard School, where he received a Bachelor of Music degree in 2001, and a Master of Music degree in 2003. Thereafter, he studied Clarinet with Allen Blustine, and Composition with Joseph Dubiel, Jonathan Kramer and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University, where he was awarded a Doctorate with distinction in 2006.Mr. Buchenholz' Commissions include Speculum Musicae, The Frelinghuysen Foundation, The Arditti Quartet, The Carnegie-Mellon Baroque Chamber Ensemble, The Carnegie-Mellon Philharmonic, Cuarteto Latinamericano, All Saints Church in Pasadena CA, The Disney Family Foundation and The National Arts Club.Christopher Buchenholz has received awards and honors from The Schubert Foundation, The George Gershwin Memorial Scholarship, The Gretchaninoff Memorial Prize in Composition, The American Academy Of Arts And Letters, The Dr. Boris and Eda Rapaport Prize, and The Henry Mancini Fellowship in Composition.Dr. Buchenholz, currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Yeshiva University, has also taught at the Juilliard School, The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, the Association to Benefit Children, New York University, and Columbia University. A native New Yorker, he began his musical career at the age of seven on CBS Sunday Morning. He also performed as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera from age eight to fourteen. He has performed at The Public Theatre, and The Kennedy Center, and has toured with the Philadelphia Oratorio Society.