ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL

ARTIST BIO

Composer Elliot Goldenthal works across orchestral, operatic, theatrical, ballet, and cinematic traditions, creating music distinguished by its dramatic intensity, structural complexity, and richly expressive orchestral language.

Hailed by the Orange County Register as “a distinguished and exciting piece of work” with a “tightly knit score,” Goldenthal’s Symphony in G-sharp Minor (2014) received its premiere with the Pacific Symphony under Carl St. Clair in Costa Mesa, California, followed by a European premiere with the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and a performance at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest. The premiere marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with the Pacific Symphony, which also commissioned October Light: Adagio for Orchestra (2019) and Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio. Conceived as a commemorative reflection on the Vietnam War, Fire Water Paper was recorded for Sony Classical with Yo-Yo Ma and later performed with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.

Continuing his engagement with large-scale symphonic form, Goldenthal’s Symphony No. 3, “Sadowska Poems” (2021) draws inspiration from the writings of Polish poet and activist Barbara Sadowska. The work premiered in Kraków’s Filharmonia Hall with the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, featuring soprano Adriana Ferfecka.

Goldenthal has maintained a longstanding commitment to chamber music throughout his career. In 2013, he released an album of early chamber works alongside the newly composed String Quartet No. 1 “The Stone Cutters”, which Gramophone described as conveying "a stratospheric sense of spiritual ecstasy." The album also features several of Goldenthal’s earlier works: Double Bass Sonata, Brass Quintet No. 2, and Three Pieces for Solo Piano. Following the release of The Stone Cutters, Goldenthal expanded his chamber output with works for varied ensembles, including Lyric Suite: The Floods of Avon for string quartet, piano, and string orchestra, which premiered at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City in 2015.

In October 2017, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth premiered Goldenthal’s For Trumpet & Strings under the baton of Dirk Brossé in a program commemorating Krzysztof Penderecki’s 80th birthday. Praised by The Philadelphia Inquirer for its “distinctive personality,” the work was subsequently expanded into a two-movement Concerto for Trumpet and Strings, performed by the National Symphonic Orchestra of the Polish Radio and toured by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. A third movement was later added and recorded in 2026 by the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York with trumpeter Luca Lipari Meyer under Dennis Russell Davies.

Goldenthal’s original two-act opera Grendel, directed by Julie Taymor, premiered at the Los Angeles Opera and was the centerpiece of the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Goldenthal received widespread critical acclaim for Grendel and was named a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Commissioned by American Ballet Theatre and the San Francisco Ballet, Goldenthal’s three-act ballet Othello, choreographed by the renowned Lar Lubovitch, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1997. The production remained in the company's repertory through 2014 and was brought on tour several times by the American Ballet Theatre. Othello received additional performances by the San Francisco Ballet at the Palais Garnier in Paris and the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. A two-hour televised adaptation for PBS Great Performances featuring Goldenthal’s original score aired in 2003 and received an Emmy nomination.

Goldenthal later reimagined the score as a seven-movement Symphony No. 2, “Othello Symphony”, which premiered in Helsinki by the Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra and conductor Elisar Riddelin, and was praised for its “gorgeous orchestral sonorities” and “remarkable solemnity.”

Deepening his engagement with Shakespeare, Goldenthal composed music for Julie Taymor's film adaptations of Titus (1999) and The Tempest (2010), as well as her stage productions of The Taming of the Shrew (1988) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (2013).

Goldenthal has composed music for more than a dozen theatrical productions including Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, for which he received a Tony nomination, an Obie Award, and multiple Drama Desk nominations. Additional stage projects include The Transposed Heads, Carlo Gozzi’s The King Stag, and The Serpent Woman, directed by Andrei Șerban, as well as Broadway productions of The Green Bird and Julie Taymor’s M Butterfly starring Clive Owen. Goldenthal also composed original music for the play Grounded, starring Anne Hathaway at the Public Theater in New York. For his contributions to the theater, Goldenthal received the American Music Theater Festival's Stephen Sondheim Award and the Edinburgh Festival Critics Choice Award.

Alongside his concert and stage works, Goldenthal is one of the most significant composers for film. He received both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his score to Frida, directed by Julie Taymor, while the film's song "Burn It Blue" received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Goldenthal conceived the Grammy-nominated scores for Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, A Time To Kill, and Taymor’s Titus, starring Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins, as well as Golden Globe and Oscar-nominated scores for Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire and Michael Collins. His work on Jordan’s acclaimed film The Butcher Boy won the Los Angeles Critics Choice Award for Best Original Score. Additional film scores in Goldenthal’s extensive body of work include Heat, Alien 3, Drugstore Cowboy, and Across the Universe. In October 2024, Goldenthal was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 24th World Soundtrack Awards in Brussels.

Suites drawn from Goldenthal's film scores are frequently performed on concert stages worldwide, including “The Grand Gothic Suite” from Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, “Symphonic Passages I” from Titus, and “Three Shakespeare Songs” from The Tempest, affirming Goldenthal's place among the most distinctive compositional voices working across disciplines today.

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