Program Notes

Paul Schoenfield (1947- )
Café Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1986)

Notes for: July 24, 2012

Judging from the spate of performances and recordings of his works in the past decade, Paul Schoenfield has become one of the most popular American composers born after World War II.

Born in Detroit and growing up in Arizona, Schoenfield began studying piano at the age of six and wrote his first composition the following year. He studied music and mathematics at the University of Arizona, and then, at the age of 22, received a doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

He has since received commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bush Foundation and Chamber Music America. Many of his compositions have a Jewish theme, and he and his family now live in Israel.

Café Music, composed in 1986, is a brilliant, albeit tongue-in-cheek, virtuoso piece for piano trio combining such diverse elements as blues, ragtime, African-American spirituals and Broadway show tunes. A paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement. For the work’s first recording, Schoenfield commented:

“The idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist of the house trio at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis. My intention was to write a kind of high-class, dinner-music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall.”

Copyright © 2012 by Willard J. Hertz