Multi-gifted, Gregory Sullivan Isaacs is a professional musician who has held numerous musical directorships of opera, choral, and symphonic organizations. Currently, he is the classical music writer for www.theaterjones.com.
He is a Pulitzer Prize nominated composer and a winner of a Peabody award for performance as well as an ASCAP award for his commitment to American Music. His critically acclaimed three act opera for tenor and piano – “Henry Faust”, a segment of which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fsNi2D16-o
It was produced for public television and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is a member of the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Arrangers, and Publishers) the Conductors Guild, and the American Music Center. He holds a bachelor degree in music from the University of Miami (he completed his first two years at the University of Michigan) and a master degree in music from the prestigious music program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Outstanding teachers include: Thor Johnson, Martha Lipton, Ivan Davis, Frederick Fennell, Leslie Bassett, Tibor Kozma, and Pierre Bernac.
John Guinn of the Detroit Free Press said: “You can add Henry Faust to that short list of successful single-singer operas (Schoenberg’s Ewartung and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine) ... it proved to be a moving experience. Isaacs’ music, cast in traditional forms, such as fugue, passacaglia, rondo and variation, is always accessible... often strikingly beautiful, as in the Ländler that closes act two.”
Byron Belt, nationally syndicated through Newhouse called him “brilliant” and said of his recording of American music with the Cascade Symphony: “As a conductor, it is Isaacs’ impassioned insight and directorial skills that makes every performance special”.
John Guinn of the Detroit Free Press said: “You can add Henry Faust to that short list of successful single-singer operas (Schoenberg’s Ewartung and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine) ... it proved to be a moving experience. Isaacs’ music, cast in traditional forms, such as fugue, passacaglia, rondo and variation, is always accessible... often strikingly beautiful, as in the Ländler that closes act two.”
Byron Belt, nationally syndicated through Newhouse called him “brilliant” and said of his recoding with the Cascade Symphony of American music: “As a conductor, it is Isaacs’ impassioned insight and directorial skills that makes every performance special”.
Recordings of some compositions are on the "compositions" page.
