Career
Bern Herbolsheimer received recognition throughout the United States and Europe for over 500 works ranging from ballet to symphonic, operatic, chamber and choral works. His numerous major commissions and premieres included ballets for the Frankfurt Ballet, the Atlanta Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the Eugene Ballet. Mark Maine Twain, his second opera, was commissioned and premiered in 1993 by the Nevada Opera for its Silver Anniversary season.
"The opera is filled with attractive, dramatic, often eloquent music. it could become an American work of genuine significance."
His Symphony Number.
1 was premiered by the Florida Symphony under conductor Kenneth Jean. Other orchestral music was premiered by the Seattle Symphony, Northwest Symphony Orchestra, and Music Today in New York under the direction of Gerard Schwarz.
His vocal and choral works were performed in Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, South America, Canada, Norway, Russia, Hungary, Japan, and throughout the United States. According to the Seattle Weekly, who named him as Best (Classical) Composer in 2005, "no Seattle composer has a more assured and polished craft than Herbolsheimer.
His choral writing — and there"s a lot of it — is luminous and subtle".
His final premieres were his chamber opera The Quartet at Carnegie Hall and Gold and Silver in Steven Soderbergh"s Home Box Office hit series The Knick. He was also the recipient of composition commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts (Symphony Number 1), Chamber Music America (Tanguy Music), the Seattle Symphony (In Mysterium Tremendum), and from numerous local organizations such as Seattle Men"s Chorus, Seattle Choral Company, Saint James Cathedral, Opus 7, Seattle Pro Musica, the Esoterics and the Cascadian Chorale. As pianist, Herbolsheimer accompanied at the Bergen International Music Festival, the Schloss Elmau Festival, and on concert series for Columbia Artists, Saint Martin"s Abbey, the Spanish Institute, the Goethe Institute, the American Opera Festival of the Sierra, Estoril/Cascais Concerts in Portugal, the Tatarstan Opera in Kazan, Battelle Institute, the Ojai Music Festival, and regularly in the Western Washington area.
Herbolsheimer served on the music faculty of Seattle"s Cornish College, where he taught composition-related classes and held a private studio, and the University of Washington, where he taught graduate classes in the voice program
Herbolsheimer died at his home in Seattle on January 13, 2016.