Martin Pearlman is an American conductor, harpsichordist, composer, and early music specialist. He founded the first permanent Baroque orchestra in North America with Boston Baroque in 1973–74. Many of its original players went on to play in or direct other ensembles in what became a growing field in the American music scene. He later founded the chorus of that ensemble and has been the music director of Boston Baroque from its inception up to the present day.
Biography
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Martin Pearlman received training in composition, violin, piano, and theory. He received a B. A. in 1967 from Cornell University, where he studied composition with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer and began studying harpsichord with Donald Paterson. After Cornell, Mr. Pearlman studied harpsichord with renowned harpsichordist and early music pioneer Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam on a Fulbright Grant. At Cornell he resided at the Telluride House. In 1971, he received an M. M. in composition from Yale University, studying composition with Yehudi Wyner worked with noted harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, and worked in the electronic music studio In 1971, he moved to Boston, where he won the Erwin Bodky competition as a harpsichordist and began performing widely in solo recitals and concertos. In 1973–74, he founded Boston Baroque. With that ensemble, he has conducted many American and world period-instrument premieres of operas, choral works, and instrumental works, including Mozart operas and major works of Bach, Handel and Monteverdi. He has directed Boston Baroque in an annual subscription series in Boston, toured with the ensemble in the U.S. and Europe, and made recordings, three of which have been nominated for Grammy awards. With modern-instrument ensembles, Pearlman made his Kennedy Center debut conducting The Washington Opera in Handel's Semele, led the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa in the Monteverdi Vespers, and has conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis, the Utah Opera in Salt Lake City, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, San Antonio Symphony, the New World Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Alabama Symphony and others. Pearlman is the only conductor from the period-instrument field to have performed live on the internationally televised Grammy Awards show. Although conducting is his main focus, Martin Pearlman is also a successful composer, an acclaimed harpsichordist and respected scholar. Pearlman's work as a composer has been influenced by, among others, Carter, Boulez, and certain composers of the following generation. Recent compositions include: his 3-act Finnegans Wake: an Operoar on texts by James Joyce; The Creation According to Orpheus for piano, harp and percussion soloists with string orchestra; Beethoven Fantasy on WoO77 for solo piano, and music for three Samuel Beckett plays, commissioned by the 92nd Street Y in New York for the Beckett centennial in 2006 and produced there and at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a harpsichordist, Pearlman has won Boston’s Erwin Bodky Competition, and was a prizewinner at the Festival of Flanders competition in Bruges, Belgium. As a harpsichordist, Pearlman has won Boston’s Erwin Bodky Competition, and was a prizewinner at the Festival of Flanders competition in Bruges, Belgium. Mr. Pearlman has also edited a new critical edition of Armand-Louis Couperin’s complete keyboard works, prepared new performing versions of Monteverdi's operas Il ritorno d'Ulisse and L'incoronazione di Poppea, and created a new orchestration and edition of Cimarosa's Il maestro di cappella. Since 2002, he has been a Professor of Music, Historical Performance at Boston University, College of Fine Arts, where he directs Baroque ensembles and teaches in the Historical Performance department of the School of Music.
