Composer

Educator

Performer

Biography

His two string quartets, Myths and Song of Four, serve as pedagogical tools to introduce the classical musician to traditional forms and improvisation, and in performance bring forth an Irish war goddess, two enchanted ravens, a young girl with dreams of piracy, and a ferociously contrapuntal chase through a twisting labyrinth.

Max is dedicated to music education and a passionate advocate for new music.  He teaches privately and at workshops throughout New England and the Midwest, and serves on the faculty for the Rocky Ridge Music Center.  Max encourages his students and collaborators to explore stories and traditions that spark the imagination, and to bring forth the outlandish, the macabre, and the magic inherent in music.

Fiddler, composer, and storyteller Max Wolpert conjures up monsters and myth where the traditional, classical, and theatrical meet.

Drawing from tradition both musical and mythological, Max Wolpert makes music inspired by stories from around the world.  Whether built upon the verve and bounce of an Irish jig, the endearing asymmetry of a Welsh pipe tune, or the drive of a Virginian breakdown, Max's pieces are crafted with taut detail and a flair for the dramatic honed over years as a pit musician, conductor, and orchestrator for theatrical productions.

Max's first viola concerto, Giants, wields the unsung hero of the orchestra to call up singing harps, dancing stormclouds, and a fiendishly

ticking clock inexorably counting down to the end of the world.