Joel Spiegelman is known internationally as a conductor, composer, pianist, harpsichordist, and author. His musical training was also international, at Yale University, the Paris Conservatoire where, as a French Government Scholar he studied with Nadia Boulanger between 1956 an 1960, the Gnesin Institute of Music in Moscow, St Petersburg Conservatory, and Brandeis University. He has made an ongoing and significant contribution to Russian musical life in the course of his career, and has appeared regularly as a conductor with leading Russian orchestras, including the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Philharmonic orchestras.
Considered to be one of the most important creators of advanced music today, Spiegelman has composed in a wide spectrum of musical forms that include chamber, choral, and symphonic music, electronic music, ballet, and music for film and television. He has had retrospective concerts of his music in Paris, New York, Vilnius, Moscow and St Petersburg.
Joel Spiegelman is the author of numerous published articles about Soviet and Russian music, and electronic music, and many articles have appeared about him in the most widely read encyclopaedias and dictionaries of music.
His recordings include his appearance as soloist with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in a recording of a work by the late Russian composer, Edison Denisov. He has also released two recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, one as harpsichordist and the other a digital transcription of the renowned work on electronic keyboards. Orchestral recordings include the complete symphonic music of the American composer Irving Fine, Millennium Magic, and Holocaust Requiem by Ronald Senator performed with the Moscow Philharmonic. The present recording of the Romantic Symphony and Violin Concerto by Giorgio Carlo Garofalo is his first recording for Naxos (Marco Polo).