Composer • Conductor • Scholar • Author
Hailed by the LA Weekly as a musician “whose praise is too seldom sung,” Nick Strimple is not only a respected Holocaust music scholar, but an imaginative and prolific composer, conductor, and writer. Scroll down to learn more.
Nick Strimple recording with the London Symphony Orchestra at Fairfield Halls, in Croydon, January 2011. (photo courtesy of Suzie Katayama)
Composer • Conductor • Scholar • Author
Hailed by the LA Weekly as a musician “whose praise is too seldom sung,” Nick Strimple is not only a respected Holocaust music scholar, but an imaginative and prolific composer, conductor and writer.
[Nick Strimple recording with the London Symphony Orchestra at Fairfield Halls, in Croydon, January 2011. (photo courtesy of Suzie Katayama)]
Spotlight
Mother & Child and Nativities Album
Stream Strimple’s Mother & Child and Nativities (Christmas cantatas) featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices (Terry Edwards and Ben Parry, Directors; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo; Rod Gilfry, baritone; Edita Brychta, speaker; Roselind Waters and Sarah Eyden, sopranos; Timothy Gonzales, tenor; Iain Farrington, organ.) Released in 2022, listen on your favorite streaming service.
Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, Pandora
New Works
Antiphon and Psalm
Walls
Prayers in a Time of Plague
Water Music
Deus Noster
Missa brevis pro defunctis
Homage à Thomas Weelkes
Premieres
World Premiere of Homage à Thomas Weelkes conducted by Suzi Digby OBE directing The Golden Bridge at a concert in Beverly Hills.
Water Music and Antiphon and Psalm conducted by Tram Sparks leading the USC Chamber Singers in Pasadena.
Recent Events
5 May 2024
In their final performance, the LAZC honored Strimple for his longstanding role as their music director. Replay the YouTube live stream performance.
10 February 2024
Catalogue
PUBLISHED COMPOSITIONS
Explore Strimple’s choral, orchestral, and instrumental works. His distinctive style offers captivating pieces that intrigue, delight, and evoke deep emotions. Strimple’s works are known for their beautiful polyphony, evocative orchestration, imaginative tone painting, and a seamless and engaging flow.
EDITIONS
Dedicated to the preservation and proliferation of music, Strimple has collaborated with musicologists, composers, and authors to produce new editions. His contributions include Louis Lewandowski’s Deutsche Kedushah; the Czech Choral Series featuring works by Eben, Ropek, Hanuš, Kricka, and Laburda; as well as Amy Beach’s Service in A Major op. 63; and Antonín Dvořák’s Saint Ludmila, op. 71.
RECORDINGS
Strimple has composed, conducted, arranged, and orchestrated music for the London Symphony Orchestra, London Voices, The Golden Bridge, and artists like Rod Stewart, Air Supply, and Frank Sinatra. His work appears on labels including Warner Records, Curb Records, Milken Archive of Jewish Music, New Line Records, 4-Tay Records, and Arista Records.
REVIEWS WRITTEN
Engage with Strimple’s perceptive reviews spanning a diverse range of musical subjects. Catering to both the general public and music enthusiasts, Strimple’s reviews and critiques appear in various print and online periodicals. His opinions have been published by Cambridge University Press, Music & Letters, Music Library Notes, American Choral Review, and The Choral Journal, among others.
FILM & TELEVISION CREDITS
In his roles as a composer, arranger, conductor, and consultant, Strimple has lent his talents to television, film, and documentary productions. His contributions include 100 Voices: A Journey Home, The Nativity Story, Prisoner of Paradise, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and A Beverly Hills Christmas with James Stewart.
BOOKS & ARTICLES
A sought-after contributor to book chapters and periodicals, Strimple has also authored two compelling volumes on choral music. Explore his written work, which includes Choral Music in the Twentieth Century; the article “Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service (Avodath Hakodesh) in Contemporary Context: a Personal Commentary on the Music and its Legacy;” the “Music as Resistance” chapter in Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis; and the article “Choral Music in Theresienstadt 1941 – 1944.”
Featured Videos
Selected YouTube Clips
Reviews
The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music André de Quadros, Editor
"Strimple chooses the explosion of stylistic options in the early twentieth century as his point of departure. He wisely clusters interesting figures around the principal innovators associated with styles such as polytonality, Impressionism and dodecophony."
Nativities
"['Nativities' is] a well-crafted, appropriate and sometimes powerful telling of the Christmas story. In fact, with so few recent Christmas cantatas of quality accessible to both performer and listener, Nativities would be a welcome addition to the church music repertory. Strimple shifts easily from chant to angular vocal lines (in the Gesualdo tradition), from complex chord clusters to single sustained notes. And his use of thirds, unisons and imitation strengthens the drama whether shouting for joy or uttering a quiet meditation. His music, though strongly edged in Vaughan Williams-like colors and textures, is nevertheless individual and convincing."
Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale and guest organist Iain Farrington
“A special event at Sinai Temple found conductor Nick Strimple presiding astutely over a combined choir and assorted other musicians. The excerpts from Schoenberg's 'Moses und Aron' were deeply moving in their multi-branched soundings and Zeisl's Requiem Ebraico soared with passionate lyricism. Here was a find -- rarely heard music of great import."
When Jews and Christians join together in concert
“This concert marks the first German tour for these seventy Jewish cantors from the USA, Canada, Europe and Israel. Together with twenty professional singers from Berlin, the program was presented under the direction of cathedral cantor Tobias Brommann and cantor Nick Strimple. Entitled “Shared Music – Shared Message,” this unique concert was the first such event in Germany’s history.”
Choral Music in the Twentieth Century
"[A] masterful discussion . . . Any choral director or lover of choral music would prize the Works List at the end of this volume, along with an extensive Bibliography and Index, and, of course, the book itself. It's a gem."
Choral Music in the Nineteenth Century
"Choral Music in the Nineteenth Century by Nick Strimple, which follows the author's earlier volume on the twentieth century, meets the need -- surprisingly unmet before -- for a comprehensive single volume devoted to this field. It will spare the lover and animateur of choral music a great deal of dipping into the New Grove -- particularly anyone who wishes for horizons broader than Western Europe with its 'dead white males'. There is, in fact, scant evidence of this wish in plenty of large choirs' concert programmes, in part no doubt because of linguistic obstacles. Strimple, however, is . . . well placed to guide those whose main interest is practical music-making.