JACK
HERSCOWITZ
Upcoming performance by
the Arditti Quartet at June in Buffalo 2020
biography
Jack Herscowitz (b.1998) is a composer studying at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT. His primary composition mentors at Middlebury are Matthew Evan Taylor and Su Lian Tan. Originally from Maryland, Jack began composing in college after taking classes with Professor Tan. Since, he has written a wide variety of music for classical, jazz, and rock performance spaces. His compositional interests include aesthetic fusion/subversion and structured improvisation among others.
Jack's music has been performed at diverse venues including the Moscow Conservatory and the 2020 SCI conference. Jack studied at the Atlantic Music Festival and the highSCORE New Music Festival in the summer of 2019, where he presented pieces for baritone voice with chamber ensemble and solo viola, respectively. At these festivals, he participated in masterclasses and lessons with Kaija Saariaho, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Melinda Wagner, and Chen Yi. In the Summer of 2020 his music will be performed by the Artditti Quartet at June in Buffalo and by members of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, where he will study under Andrea Mazzariello and Sarah Kirkland Snider. He has collaborated with Pete Francis of the rock band Dispatch to arrange one of Francis’ original songs, Show Me, for rock band and orchestra. He is also grateful to have workshopped his music with ensembles including the Jupiter String Quartet, the Imani Winds, and the Brentano String Quartet.
Jack is also a composer of big band music, having written and arranged charts for the Middlebury College Jazz Ensemble. Outside of composing, Jack also performs as a saxophonist playing with the College Jazz Ensemble and with smaller student groups. His upcoming projects include a setting of text from Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies for chamber orchestra and chamber choir, a setting of José
Martí's prologue to Versos Sencillos for SATB choir, and an original big band composition.
Jack is also interested in ethnomusicology, having worked as Professor Damascus Kafumbe’s research assistant as Kafumbe completed his first research manuscript, Tuning the Kingdom, which was published spring 2018. His personal research has studied the relationship between social change and Chilean popular music, as well as syncretic musical influences in jazz music. Jack also studies Environmental Policy at Middlebury College where he has pursued a variety of interests including Mapuche-Chilean land right conflicts (research published in spring 2019), GIS mapping, and fishing policy.