Louis Rosen is a composer, lyricist, performer, author, guitarist, educator and Guggenheim Foundation Music Composition Fellowship recipient whose musical style fuses and juxtaposes classical, folk and jazz elements. 

Albums of his songs and instrumental music include five solo albums: 

  • LOVE AND ASHES (2023, eleven songs, music, lyrics and arrangements) 
  • MUSIC FOR GUITAR (2022, twelve songs without words for solo guitar) 
  • I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING (2020, music, lyrics and arrangements) 
  • DUST TO DUST BLUES (2017, music, lyrics and arrangements) 
  • TIME WAS (2013, music, lyric adaptations and arrangements) 

Two albums featuring various performers: 

  • IT IS STILL DARK: THREE SUITES (2022, including “Winter Carols” for piano, four-hands, “Suite for Clarinet and Piano,” and the song cycle, “It Is Still Dark – Songs for Sondra, Songs of Exile”) 
  • ACT ONE: PIANO MUSIC FROM THE THEATER (2017, featuring three suites: “Act One Suite for Solo Piano,” “Into Night and On the Verge” and “Orchards” for piano, four-hands) 

And five albums featuring vocalist Capathia Jenkins, including the complete BLACK LOOM TRILOGY – 3 album/song cycles based on the poetry of three major African-American poets: 

  • Trilogy Part I: DREAM SUITE: SONGS IN JAZZ AND BLUES — The Langston Hughes Songs (Music, 2016, also featuring vocalist Alton Fitzgerald White) 
  • Trilogy Part II: ONE OUNCE OF TRUTH: The Nikki Giovanni Songs (2008, Music and Arrangements) 
  • Trilogy Part III: PHENOMENAL WOMAN: The Maya Angelou Songs and Songs Without Words (2018, eleven songs and four songs without words, music and arrangements) 
  • THE ACHE OF POSSIBILITY (2009, twelve songs, music, lyrics and arrangements) 
  • SOUTH SIDE STORIES (2006, a twelve-song cycle, music, lyrics and arrangements). 

Theater Compositions include BOOK OF THE NIGHT (1991, Music and Co-Lyrics, Goodman Theater) and A CHILD’S GARDEN (2000, Music, Lyric Adaptations and Co-Libretto, Off-Broadway); 30 scores for productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and at major regional theaters around the country including Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi Newhouse Theaters, Roundabout on Broadway, Circle in the Square on Broadway, The NYSF in Central Park, Chicago’s Goodman Theater, Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., Long Wharf in New Haven, Princeton's McCarter Theater and many others; as well as twelve concert suites, instrumental and vocal, drawn from these theater scores. 

Books: Louis is the author of the memoir/oral narrative THE SOUTH SIDE: THE RACIAL TRANSFORMATION OF AN AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD (Publisher, Ivan R. Dee, Cloth, 1998; Paperback, 1999); and BEYOND CATEGORY: MUSIC THEORY FROM BACH TO THE BEATLES (2015, self-published). 

Additional Concert Music includes:

  • THE PEARL OCTET: 12 INSTRUMENTAL SCENES FOR AN IMAGINED THEATER (2022 - slated for album release in fall 2023) 
  • RIVERSONGS NONET: FOUR INSTRUMENTAL PORTRAITS (2022 - slated for album release in fall 2023)
  • CROSSING LINES: Six Movements for String Quartet (2023)
  • RIVERSONGS TRIO for Flute, Clarinet and Piano (2023)
  • SUITE: PEER GYNT (1998, in ten movements, vocal and instrumental) 
  • A CHILD’S GARDEN SONG SUITE (1994, ten songs for voice and piano on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson);
  • FIVE RIVERSONGS (1985, for soprano, baritone and piano, four-hands on poems by Edgar Lee Masters); and RIVERSONGS (1984, six movements for mixed chorus on poems by Edgar Lee Masters)
  • MOTHER COURAGE SONG SUITE (1993, 11 songs for four vocalists and three players) 
  • MUSIC FOR GALILEO (1986, four songs and one dance for six singers and three players) 
  • MUSIC FOR THE TEMPEST (1987, nine movements, vocal and instrumental) 
  • FOUR SONGS (1983, for voice and piano) 
  • THREE PIECES for Solo Piano (1982) 
  • THREE CHORAL ODES (1977, for women’s chorus, piano and percussion)

AWARDS include the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition (2005); the NEA New American Works Grant (1995); The 2nd Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Musical Theater Award (1992); ASCAP Awards, 1993-2022; Puffin Foundation Grant (2006); Anna Sosenko Trust Award (2006); Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Galileo Prize & Commission (2005); Chicago's John W. Schmid Award, Best New Work ("BOOK OF THE NIGHT", 1991); Semifinalist Prize - NYC Contemporary Music Symposium ("ACT ONE SUITE for Solo Piano", 2021); São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival ("ACT ONE SUITE for Solo Piano", 2020/2022); five residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1988-1994); Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Recording Grants ("A CHILD'S GARDEN", 1998, and "DREAM SUITE", 2002) and Production Grant ("A Child's Garden", 2000). 

TEACHERS: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman, Arthur Laurents and Alfred Uhry (Composing and Writing for Theater); William Ferris (choral composition, orchestration, counterpoint and formal analysis);  William Russo (music theory, counterpoint and jazz composition/orchestration); Joseph Reiser (music theory and composition).