Manuel Laufer

An enthusiastic proponent of new music, Manuel Laufer has presented world premieres at Merkin Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space, Bang on a Can, June in Buffalo, and Festival Atempo (Caracas and Paris). As a core member of the Hayley-Laufer Duo and Ensemble Atempo, he has concertized extensively playing contemporary chamber music, performing canonic works by composers including Babbitt, Cage, Crumb, Lachenmann, Xenakis, and Yun, in addition to newly commissioned repertoire. His solo work has championed modernist voices from his native Venezuela, placing particular emphasis on composer Diógenes Rivas.

A versatile musician, he is also passionate about traditional repertoire. He has performed with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, and appears yearly at the Blueridge International Chamber Music Festival (Vancouver). Highlights of collaborative engagements featuring traditional repertoire in recent and upcoming seasons include recitals with clarinetist Mingzhe Wang and performances of Hugo Wolf’s complete Italienisches Liederbuch.

Currently the Director of Piano Studies at New York University, Manuel Laufer has been a visiting artist at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and University at Buffalo’s Creative Arts Initiative. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee of Festival Atempo, and as President of the Piano Teachers Congress of New York, whose 20th/21st-Century Music Festival he co-chairs. Formerly, he served on the staff of University of California, Irvine as a collaborative pianist.

Manuel has two forthcoming albums devoted to new chamber works on the Vancouver-based Redshift label, and recently contributed a chapter on early approaches to serialism and atonality in Venezuelan music to the edited volume Music and Identity in Venezuela (Jenny Stanford Publishing). He holds degrees from McGill University, University of California, Irvine, and NYU Steinhardt, and pursued specialized studies in collaborative arts at the Songfest Professional Program, the Franz-Schubert-Institut at Baden-bei-Wien, and the Orford Arts Centre Summer Academy. His principal teachers include Marilyn Nonken, Gabriela Montero, Nina Scolnik, Edna Golandsky, and Kyoko Hashimoto.