Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. Born to a piano teacher mother and physician father, he was raised surrounded by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the “new tango” of Astor Piazzolla. As a mature composer, his blending of genres and seamless integration of voices speak volumes about his approach and style, a musical language that can only be termed “Golijovian.” 

Since the early 1990s, Golijov has enjoyed collaborations with some of the world’s leading chamber music ensembles including the Kronos Quartet and the St. Lawrence String Quartet and relationships with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, and Robert Spano. His klezmer-inflected Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for string quartet and clarinet was established as a modern classic following the Kronos Quartet and David Krakauer’s 1997 recording release on Nonesuch Records. In 2000, the premiere of Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) in Germany took the music world by storm. The Boston Symphony Orchestra presented the U.S. premiere in February 2001. The Boston Globe called it “the first indisputably great composition of the 21st century.” 

The BSO commissioned Golijov’s first opera, Ainadamar, for the Tanglewood Music Center, which premiered it with a cast including Dawn Upshaw at Tanglewood in summer 2003. Peter Sellars’s production and an audio recording by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra led to worldwide staged and concert performances. In the 2024-25 season Ainadamar was presented by the Metropolitan Opera in a new production by Deborah Colker. 

Golijov has composed film scores to Sally Potter’s The Man Who Cried and four features by Francis Ford Coppola, including Youth Without Youth and Megalopolis. His other works include Hebraische Milonga for cello and piano, premiered at the Spoleto Festival in 2021 by cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan, and the 80-minute song cycle Falling Out of Time, based on the novel by the same name by David Grossman. The SilkRoad Ensemble with vocalists Wu Tong, Nora Fischer, and Biella da Costa premiered Falling Out of Time in 2019, performed it at Carnegie Hall in May 2022, and presented it in Boston’s Symphony Hall in 2023. Golijov served as the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall during the 2012-13 season. He is Loyola Professor of Music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he has taught since 1991. 

Golijov’s relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra began with his summer as a Tanglewood Music Center Composition Fellow in 1990. His YIDDISHBBUK was premiered at Tanglewood by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in 1992. His cello concerto Azul, composed for Yo-Yo Ma, was premiered by Ma and the BSO in 2006. The BSO also co-commissioned his major song cycle Ayre, composed for Dawn Upshaw, and commissioned his Sign of the Leviathan for horn and strings. More recently, the BSO commissioned his Creation, a major oratorio for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra responding to Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Creation. The BSO under conductor Eric Jacobsen premieres Golijov’s new work, with guest artists including vocalists Cécile McLorin Salvant and Davóne Tines, at Symphony Hall November 12-14, 2026, following performances of Haydn’s masterwork the previous week.