Michael Riesman studied composition with Peter Stearns and conducting with Carl Bamberger at the
Mannes College of Music and got a B.S. there in 1967. The summer of 1967 he went to the
Aspen Music Festival where he studied with
Darius Milhaud, and won the student composition prize. He then went on to study composition with
Leon Kirchner,
Roger Sessions, and
Earl Kim at
Harvard, where he earned an M.A. and PhD (1972). He was a composer in residence at the
Marlboro Music Festival in 1969 and a fellow at
Tanglewood in 1970. He was awarded a
Fulbright fellowship in 1970 and studied with
Gottfried von Einem in
Vienna. He moved to
New York City in the summer of 1971 and then taught at
SUNY-Purchase that winter, leaving in the summer of 1972 to dedicate himself full-time to a performing career. He had some early successes as a composer, most notably with
"Phases", a work for electronically modulated piano, given a premiere in at the
Metropolitan Museum in New York by Peter Serkin. The
New York Times called the piece "the most interesting work on the program" which consisted of works by major 20th-century figures including
Luciano Berio and
Olivier Messiaen. Riesman later performed the piece himself at the
New York Philharmonic's downtown series at the
Public Theater. Another important work was his
"Chamber Concerto" which he conducted in a performance with the
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at
Carnegie Hall and elsewhere. In 1974 he was invited by
Philip Glass to join his Ensemble as a keyboard player and has been a member ever since. In the years since, his role with Glass expanded and he took on the duties of music director and conductor, encompassing arranging, personnel management, and conducting theatrical and film works. He has released just one album of his own music,
"Formal Abandon", which was written as a dance work for the choreographer
Lucinda Childs and premiered at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. As conductor, he has an appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and
Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has two
Grammy nominations, for
"The Photographer" and
"Kundun". As piano soloist, he has appeared with the
Chicago and
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, among others. He has released 5 albums of music for solo piano. All are arrangements of film scores by Glass:
The Hours;
Dracula; a compilation called Philip Glass Soundtracks; a sequel, Philip Glass Soundtracks Vol. II; and Beauty and the Beast. He has many album credits as conductor, keyboardist, and producer. As a student at Harvard he took a course in
computer science and has maintained an involvement in computers and
music technology through his career. This has included working as a beta tester and consultant for companies such as digidesign (now
Avid) and
Peavey, and writing music software for his own use. He is married to Elizabeth Blakeslee Riesman, a retired Montessori teacher, and lives in New York City. ==Discography==