During the 2007-08 season HAROLD MELTZER (born 1966 in Brooklyn, New York) is Music Alive composer in residence with the Colonial Symphony in New Jersey, which will play three of his works. Other events during the upcoming season include the premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall of Privacy, a piano concerto commissioned by Ursula Oppens and the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group; the premiere of a piano sonata commissioned by Symphony Space in New York for Sara Laimon, who will then perform the work at Wigmore Hall in London and in Miami and Philadelphia; and performances by the Vancouver Symphony, John Shirley-Quirk, the Peabody Trio, the Cygnus Ensemble, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. New projects include a second piano concerto, for Sara Laimon and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a violin solo for Michelle Makarski, and a work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano for the Pacifica Quartet and Mary Nessinger. Earlier commissions have come from the American Composers Forum, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, Concert Artists Guild, Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program and its New Music New Donors program, the National Flute Association, the New Jersey Composers Guild, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, tenor Paul Sperry, and the Westchester Philharmonic.

Last season he performed as a harpsichord soloist in his concerto, Virginal, with the American Composers Orchestra at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia and at Zankel Hall in New York, and as narrator in his chamber music theater work, Sindbad, in tours with the Peabody Trio and concerts with the Mannes Trio and Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. His work for theater and dance includes music for Shakespeare and Company, Syracuse Stage, and choreographer Molissa Fenley. As a conductor, he has given American premieres of works by Harrison Birtwistle and Thomas Ades. His music is recorded on the Albany and CRI labels and published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and Urban Scrawl Music Company (ASCAP).

Harold's work has been supported by a 2004 Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, a 2004 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. Harold graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, and from King's College, Cambridge. After completing a degree at Columbia Law School and working in New York as a lawyer, he attended the Yale School of Music, earning a DMA in 2000. He teaches composition at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Ten years ago he helped found the new music ensemble SEQUITUR, and remains co-Artistic Director. The group, which has given fifty premieres by emerging and established composers, focuses on new music's interactions with dance, theater, and visual art, and on a series of recordings on the Albany Records and Koch International Classics labels.

The Residency of Harold Meltzer is made possible through Music Alive, a residency program of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer.  This national program is designed to provide orchestras with resources and tools to support their presentation of new music to the public and build support for new music within their institutions.  Funding for Music Alive is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music.