Short Bio
Dan Sonenberg is a composer, performer and educator living in Portland, Maine. His opera The Summer King, on the life of Negro League baseball great Josh Gibson, received its concert world premiere in 2014 in a performance presented by Portland Ovations and co-sponsored by the University of Southern Maine. The fully-staged World Premiere was presented by Pittsburgh Opera on April 29, 2017, starring baritone Alfred Walker and mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, and received a second production by Michigan Opera Theatre in May 2018. Mr. Sonenberg’s short one-act opera Girl in Six Beats, with a libretto by seven high school students, was commissioned by Opera Maine as part of an initiative with The Telling Room and the University of Southern Maine. It had its world premiere at USM in April 2018 and will soon be premiered in a newly orchestrated version. His First Light: A Fanfare for Maine, commissioned in celebration of Maine’s bicentennial was premiered in October 2021, at Merrill Auditorium. Other recent works include Octet (2023) for woodwind octet, commissioned by the Osher School of Music at USM, The Surprise Guest (2023) for vibraphone and live electronics, commissioned by percussionist Lynn Vartan, kintsukuroi (2021), for violin and piano, commissioned by violinist Rob Lehmann, But Why? (2020) for multi-instrumental duet, Rope Ladder (2018), commissioned by the Cassatt Quartet for clarinetist Vasko Dukovsky, and Beauty is Not Enough (2019), a song cycle on poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, commissioned by Resinosa Ensemble. Other recent performances include Opera America, the Da Capo Chamber Players, American Opera Projects, Fort Worth Opera, members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and numerous others. In the past several years he has also been active as a rock musician, releasing a solo album, Peaks Island Ferry, in 2014, and both an E.P. (The Bear (2013)) and full length album (Long Overdue (2015)) with his band Lovers of Fiction. More recently he has released the EP Mint Explosion (2021), the full-length album Tiny Malone (2022), and several singles in 2023 and 2024. He is Professor of Music at the University of Southern Maine, where he has taught since 2004.
[last update: March 15, 2024]