Gene Pritsker


Gene Pritsker is a Russian-born composer, guitarist, rapper and record producer living in New York City. He moved to the United States with his family in 1978 and lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1990 to 1994 where he studied composition with Giampaolo Bracali.
While attending Manhattan School of Music he co-founded the Absolute Ensemble with Kristjan Järvi and formed Sound Liberation, which has released CDs on Col-legno, Composers Concordance Records and Innova Recordings. Pritsker's music has been performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, MDR Symphony Orchestra, Athens Camarata, Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. He worked closely with the Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul and has orchestrated Hollywood movies.
His compositions are published by Falls House Press, Gold Branch Music, Periferia Sheet Music and Calabrese Brothers Music, LLC.
His compositions and performances can be heard on Col Legno, Enja Records, Eutrepe, Wergo, Innova Recordings, Composers' Concordance Records, and Capstone Records labels. He is a member of Broadcast Music, Inc..

Reception

Pritsker contributed to Absolute Bach Reinvented, a collection of works based on Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard inventions. His "Bach-derived framework" was always evident in his Reinventions as he played an "art-metal guitar solo" that included "flamboyant tango rhythms."
Pritsker's 2006 composition, Self Laceration, was positively reviewed in The New York Times, which noted that it "begins with a rhythmically insistent, irresistibly zesty movement in which the focus moves briskly around the ensemble."
Another 2006 citation in The New York Times, by Brian Wise, cited Pritsker's Cauldron of Unsatisfied Hatred as the "highlight of the evening" and referred to the piece as a "pulsating duet". Wise went on to say, "Mr. Pritsker expressed skepticism about whether a deep connection could be drawn between music and pugilism."
During a performance of Terry Riley's In C at Governors Island, The New York Times noted, "Probably no one had more fun than the guitarist Gene Pritsker."
In 2012 he released the chamber opera William James's Varieties of Religious Experience with Composers Concordance Recordings. In a review for NewMusicBox, Frank J. Oteri described its blurring of boundaries as "the only possible reaction to being surrounded by all of these sounds and the musical styles from which they originate."

Compositions – selected

Samplestra is pre-recorded electronics

Solo

Pritsker was invited to orchestrate and compose additional music for the screenplay adaption of the novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The screenplay was written by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski.