alexander goodhart
Composer Pianist Educator
Artist Bio
In the clever intermingling of whole-tone scales
and melodic chromaticism in Debussy's L'isle Joyeuse,
a younger Alex Goodhart discovered his purpose
was to be an artist, an expressive creator.
To this day, his music seeks to juxtapose disparate
and complimentary musical vernacular, and to
communicate as directly as possible with an audience.
I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, where music and acting occupied much of my childhood and helped foster an interest in the lives of those with unique perspectives and challenges.
Drawing inspiration from a kaleidoscope of sources— from Beethoven and the Kronos Quartet to Janis Joplin and Lady Gaga— I craft works that give voice to the various dreams and pains of human experience. Some of these pieces invoke generational voices, like Edgar Allan Poe’s in my Raven Cantata, or James Joyce’s in yes (mountain flower). Others are uniquely mine and more rooted in the contemporary world, such as DIVIDED: an American Symphony. My voice has, so far, found itself most clearly in the realms of symphonic, choral, and vocal literature.
My formal studies took place at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the European-American Music Alliance, the Oregon Bach Composer’s Symposium, and the Atlantic Music Festival.
As a musician and educator, I am dedicated to further channeling my music into community; I want my work to stand on its own, musically, but be deployed in a way that creates collaborative opportunities for communities that stand to gain profoundly from the transformative power of music, the same power that has, time and again, rescued me! I have strong opinions on the direction of classical music, new music, contemporary programming and legacy institutions, and it would be most gratifying to be a part of movements that bend the tides away from insular, repetitive practices.