Musical Notes, Jewish and Otherwise

Marsha Dubrow in conversation with composer Judith Shatin about Judith’s
five-decade career in music as an award-winning composer and founder of the Virginia Center for Computer Music at UVA

Judith Shatin (www.judithshatin.com) is a composer who draws on traditional and expanded instrumental palettes, often fusing them with electronic media. Her music has been commissioned by organizations including the Barlow Endowment, Fromm Foundation, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress and ensembles such as the National Symphony, the Kronos Quartet. Jewish themes form an important element in her music, with commissions including those from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival. Her music is recorded on labels including Centaur, Innova, Neuma, New World Records and Ravello. Called “highly inventive on every level” by the Washington Post, Judith Shatin’s music combines an adventurous approach to timbre with dynamic narrative design. Educated at Douglass College (Phi Beta Kappa, Julia Carlie Prize in Composition), The Juilliard School (MM, Abraham Ellstein Award) and Princeton University (MFA, PhD), Judith is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia.

Marsha Dubrow, both Musicologist and Composer of Jewish Music, is currently a visiting scholar in Jewish Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. After a corporate and entrepreneurial career of more than two decades, directly prior to her appointment at JTS, she served for over a decade as Rabbi and Cantor of B’nai Jacob, a Conservative congregation in Jersey City, New Jersey . During that period, she also served as a Resident Scholar and Research Associate  at the City University of New York Graduate School. There, at the Center for Jewish Studies, among the initiatives she developed was the groundbreaking ‘Beyond Boundaries,’ a series of Jewish music symposia and concerts exploring new dimensions in Jewish music. Dr. Dubrow is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, among them: the Milstein Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History, State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Hazzanut and Yiddish Song and Shalshelet Awards for her new Jewish Hebrew-language liturgical compositions. She has given numerous papers at many national and international academic conferences including the Association for Jewish Studies and has published articles, most recently on Lazar Weiner and Ignaz Moscheles. She received a B.A. in Music from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Musicology from N.Y.U. and an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology from Princeton University.