Joshua Rifkin was born on April 22,1944 and is an American conductor, pianist, and musicologist.
13 Facts About Joshua Rifkin
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Joshua Rifkin is currently a professor of music at Boston University.
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Joshua Rifkin is best known among the public for helping to revive ragtime in the 1970s by recording three albums of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
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In November 1970, Joshua Rifkin released the first of three albums of Scott Joplin's work: Scott Joplin: Piano Rags.
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Joshua Rifkin is best known to classical musicians for his thesis that much of Johann Sebastian Bach's vocal music, including the St Matthew Passion, was performed with only one singer per voice part, an idea generally rejected by his peers when he first proposed it in 1981.
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Joshua Rifkin has done extensive research on the orchestral suites of Bach, notably arguing in detail that No 2 in B minor, BWV 1067, is based on an earlier version in A minor in which the solo instrument was not the flute.
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Joshua Rifkin studied with Vincent Persichetti in the Music Division at the Juilliard School and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1964.
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Joshua Rifkin worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen at Darmstadt in 1961 and 1965.
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Joshua Rifkin has taught at several universities, including Brandeis University, Harvard, and Yale, and is currently Professor of Music and Fellow of the University Professors at Boston University.
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Joshua Rifkin is noted for his research in the field of Renaissance and Baroque music: he has examined the authorship and chronology of music attributed to Josquin des Prez; Renaissance music manuscripts; the motet around 1500; and music of Heinrich Schutz.
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Joshua Rifkin has led operatic productions at Theater Basel in Switzerland and the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich.
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Joshua Rifkin has recorded music of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra and Capella Coloniensis.
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Joshua Rifkin performed with the Even Dozen Jug Band and made a recording of his humorous re-imaginings of music by Lennon and McCartney in the style of the 18th century, notably Bach, known as The Baroque Beatles Book and recently reissued on CD.