Scholarship and Biography
David Rakowski's music has been noted for its originality, its explosive high energy, its visceral surface, its unusual and quirky turns, its meticulous attention to detail, and its unfaltering sense of form and proportion. He writes both in large forms (ten concertos and seven symphonies) and small forms (200 published piano études and préludes, dozens of chamber works, nine song cycles, music for children). His most well-known and well-regarded music is his set of 100 high-energy piano études, which are regularly performed worldwide. He recently finished a set of 100 piano préludes, and a third piano concerto for pianist Geoffrey Burleson. He has received the Rome Prize, the Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (for "significant contributions to the chamber music repertory"), the Barlow Prize, two Fromm Foundation commissions, two Koussevitzky Foundation commissions, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Chevillion-Bonnaud Composition Prize from the Orlèans International Piano Competition, and he has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; he also received the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer '69 Prize for Teaching and Mentoring from Brandeis. He was the Maurice Abravanel Distinguished Visiting Composer at the University of Utah twice, a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Karel Husa Visiting Professor of Composition at the Ithaca College School of Music. In 2016, he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Rakowski's music is published by C.F. Peters New York, and recorded on Bridge, BMOP/sound, Albany, CRI, Americus, Ravello, Altissimo, Centaur, ECM, XAS, and Blue Griffin.
Rakowski previously taught at Stanford University and Columbia University before joining the faculty of Brandeis in 1995. He has also taught part-time at Harvard University and New England Conservatory, and at various summer festivals.