Gene Pritsker

Composer/guitarist/rapper/Di.J./producer Gene Pritsker has written over 690 compositions, including chamber operas, orchestral and chamber works, electro-acoustic music and songs for hip-hop and rock ensembles. All of his compositions employ an eclectic spectrum of styles and are influenced by his studies of various musical cultures.

He is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation; an eclectic hip hop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc. ensemble which has released CD’s on Col-legno, Composers Concordance and  Innova Records. He is also the co-director of Composers Concordance, a new music presenting organization with a 35 year history of producing concerts in NYC.  

He co-founded  the Grammy-nominated Absolute Ensemble  with Kristjan Jarvi and has been a composer in residence  and guitarist since its creation in 1993.   Gene's music has been performed worldwide at various festivals and by many ensembles and performers including the The Adelaide Symphony, MDR Symphony, The Athens Camerata, China Philharmonic Orchestra, Brooklyn, Shanghai and Berlin Philharmonics, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga, Orchester des Pfalztheaters, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Anhaltische Philharmonie as well as such soloists as Anne Akiko Meyers, Lara St. John, Sarah Chang, Kathleen Supové, Martin Kuuskmann and Simone Dinnerstein. He worked closely with jazz fusion legend Joe Zawinul and has orchestrated major Hollywood movies, including 'Cloud Atlas', for which he wrote additional music and composed his ''Cloud Atlas Symphony’. He is also the lead orchestrator for such TV series and Babylon Berlin and Netflix's Sense8.

He is   co-director of  Composers Concordance Records and artist-in-residence at the Austrian Outreach Festival. Gene Pritsker's music is published by: Falls House Press, Gold Branch Music, Periferia Sheet Music & Calabrese Brothers music and recorded on: Col Legno, Enja, Eutrepe, Wergo, Innova , Composers' Concordance Records, SONY Classical, and Capstone record labels.

The New York Times described him as "...audacious...multitalented." Joseph Pehrson, writing in The Music Connoisseur, described Pritsker as "dissolving the artificial boundaries between high brow, low brow, classical, popular musics and elevates the idea that if it's done well it is great music, regardless of the style or genre". Raul d'Gama Rose writes in All About Jazz: "Barring the obvious exceptions, much of 21st century composition appears to be thinning in significance, but this might be about to change. Gene Pritsker is one of a very spare handful of composers effecting this change."   Evan Burke writes in ICareIf YouListen: "Pritsker seems to look at all music as one genre, in which all other possible styles, sounds and traditions are meant to be used as building blocks and palette colors, combined in various configurations to create a boundless whole. This result is almost always more interesting, and representative of how most new music will be born in the 21st century, as genres and barriers begin to vanish, and as styles begin cross-fertilizing in previously unimagined ways." Classical Music Sentinel writes:  "His expressive reach is so wide as to encompass everything from ethno/techno, rock/jazz fusion, classical opera and more, and it all seems to be effortlessly integrated within his anima and comes out through different facets of his persona. You could almost see him as a modern day renaissance man. “

Organizations he is associated with include:  Co-director of Composers Concordance & Composers Concordance Records, co-founder/guitarist of Absolute Ensemble and artist-in-residence at the Austrian Outreach Festival. Gene Pritsker's music is published by: Falls House Press, Gold Branch Music, Periferia Sheet Music & Calabrese Brothers music. Recorded on: Col Legno, Enja, Eutrepe, Wergo, Innova , Composers' Concordance Records, SONY Classical, and Capstone record labels.

Review and interview on Jazzdagama.com

‘Gene Pritsker: Varieties Of Musical Experience’

"Gene Pritsker is a modernist at heart. If there is something new to be said to describe an old form or even a formless old thing – as old as yesterday, that is – this extraordinary musician will be among the first to say it…All of his music is of the highest quality, audacious and witty, joyous and elevated, and incomparable to anything written and recorded. In all of this Gene Pritsker has created a singular vocabulary, spoken not only by someone deeply schooled in music, but also in history, theology, and philosophy."