Michael Isaacson

b. 1946

Dr. Isaacson has a catalog of more than five-hundred publications of secular and sacred music and fifty produced recorded albums and is one of the most prolific and accomplished American Jewish composers of our time. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Michael attended Hunter College and Brooklyn College, studied keyboard at the Juilliard School, ethnomusicology at Hebrew University, and advanced studies at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a Ph.D. in Composition. As an orchestrator, composer and conductor in Los Angeles, Dr. Isaacson has assisted film composers Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Walter Scharf, John Williams, and Charles Fox. He has composed original musical scores for the mini-series Rich Man Poor Man II, episodes of Little Women, Hawaii 5-0 and Bionic Woman, many movies of the week and the daytime series Loving and Days of Our Lives. He has arranged for Bob Hope as well as for John Williams and the Boston Pops. His original music was featured on TV's The Nanny, Curb Your Enthusiasm and in Barry Levinson's feature film Liberty Heights.

In 1988, he began to produce recordings with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Out of this association came the founding of Michael Isaacson & The Israel Pops. Michael Isaacson has composed five sacred services for the Sabbath, several cantatas, High Holy Day music, and musical settings of life-cycle and wisdom texts. He has created, taught and recorded an innovative ten-lesson syllabus for teaching Jewish music composition, composed and conducted the entire symphonic music for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and produced CDs of his own music with Cantor Faith Steinsnyder, Thom King, Jay Frailich, Nathan Lam, and the Israel Philharmonic. As Founding Music Director of The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, he conducted and produced fourteen CDs of previously unrecorded Jewish music. His children's millennial service L'Maaseih V'reisheet (To Recreate the World) made Jewish musical history when it became the first sacred service co-commissioned and simultaneously premiered by forty-three congregations across America and Canada. The Michael Isaacson Songbook (Volumes I, II, and III), containing one hundred and sixty of his best loved settings, is published by Transcontinental Music. His new book, Jewish Music as Midrash: What Makes Music Jewish? now in its third printing is a singular approach to the literature.. He also has created an extensive catalog of both sacred and secular concert choral music.