Above: Judith Clurman and members of EVUSA at the NPR studios, 2022.

Judith Clurman, Conductor

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“Judith Clurman – the exceptional conductor”
— Time Out New York

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• Publicity Still Portrait (Left), courtesy Michael Yeshion.
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Contact: jclurman (@) gmail.com 

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About Judith Clurman

Judith Clurman is a conductor, chorus master, educator, composer, arranger, and editor whose career happily refuses to fit into a single musical box. From Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Sesame Street, film, television, ballet, and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, she has spent her life bringing people together through music.

A passionate champion of American music, Judith has commissioned and conducted works by more than seventy composers and librettists, helping to create a remarkable body of new choral repertoire. Her collaborators have included Milton Babbitt, William Bolcom, Jason Robert Brown, Marvin Hamlisch, Jennifer Higdon, Nico Muhly, Stephen Schwartz, Howard Shore, and many others.

Above: Judith Clurman, conductor, rehearsal video with Essential Voices USA.

Judith is Music Director of Essential Voices USA (EVUSA), the acclaimed ensemble she leads in performances, recordings, commissions, and community projects. EVUSA has appeared at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and on numerous recordings devoted to new American music and the holidays. Judith received two Emmy Award nominations for music direction and composition and conducted Tania León’s music on the Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated recording In Motion.

Over the years, Judith has collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Composers Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Omaha Symphony, Boston Pops, and New York Pops. She founded and conducted The New York Concert Singers, whose performances were featured in Lincoln Center’s Great Performers and Live From Lincoln Center series and at Carnegie Hall.

Her career has taken her to the Mozarteum in Salzburg and onto national television for NBC and PBS. She supervised and conducted the choral music for the Sony Pictures film The Song of Names, co-directed Harvard University’s Bernstein: Boston to Broadway project, and served as Associate Music Director for all vocal music during Season 39 of Sesame Street. She has conducted the Macy’s July 4th Fireworks Spectacular and created and conducted the Singing Christmas Tree Float for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Some of Judith’s most meaningful projects have centered on bringing communities together. She conducted the Carnegie Hall/Juilliard Mozart Requiem Sing-Alongs commemorating anniversaries of 9/11 and served as Music Director of the Lincoln Center Holiday Tree Celebration. There, she collaborated with artists and organizations across Lincoln Center, commissioned new music, worked with internationally renowned soloists and the Muppets, and invited more than 15,000 schoolchildren to sing under her direction.

Judith is equally at home rediscovering music from the past and creating music for the future. She has conducted world and U.S. premieres of works and editions by Mozart, Rossini, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Ned Rorem, and Joby Talbot. Her Mozart premieres include newly found canon texts for the world premiere of Leck mir den Arsch, K. 233a, and the U.S. premieres of Leck mich im Arsch, K. 231, and Bei der Hitz im Sommer ess ich, K. 234.

Her own compositions and arrangements are published by G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard, and Schott Music and have been performed by the Detroit, Houston, New Jersey, National, San Francisco, and Toronto Symphonies, as well as the Boston and New York Pops. Her works Eight Days of Lights and Washington Women are performed by choruses across the United States.

Education has always been central to Judith’s musical life. From 1989 to 2007, she served as Director of Choral Activities at The Juilliard School, where she created and conducted the Juilliard Choral Union and taught conducting and vocal chamber music. She has been a visiting artist and teacher at Cambridge University, Harvard University, Princeton University, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Janáček Academy, and Israel’s Zimriya Festival at Hebrew University. She currently teaches voice at the Manhattan School of Music and previously served as the vocal specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts/Columbia University Institute of Classical Music.

Judith also edits two choral series for Hal Leonard, encompassing more than 200 publications. Her ensembles can be heard on the Acis, Albany, Decca, Delos, New World, and Symphony Space labels.

Judith is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

“Working with Judith Clurman is always a delight.  She’s so professional and such a superb musician, that I always know the end result will be incredible…a great thing for a composer to know.”
— Jennifer Higdon

“Over the years I have attended hundreds of performances of The Sound Of Music. Last month’s Salzburg performance was extraordinary.  Ms. Clurman provided adroit musical direction. With vibrant integrity, Judith Clurman’s The Sound Of Music Suite was refreshingly expressive, wonderfully inventive and simply elegant.”
— Elisabeth Von Trapp

“The group sang with ravishing smoothness and warmth and with complete flexibility in dynamics and coloration.”
— The New York Times

“Clurman’s singers offer brilliantly rich sound, fluent musicality and sophisticated wide-ranging expression. The term virtuoso would be no hyperbole.”
— American Organist

“Clurman is an outstanding choral conductor.”
– New York Daily News