Fredrick Kaufman's compositions have been performed by orchestras such as the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony. His ballets have been danced worldwide by companies such as the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Batsheva Dance Company, the Bat-Dor Dance Company and the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre.
Kaufman is a former Fulbright Scholar who has received the Darius Milhaud Award in Composition from the Aspen Music Festival and is recipient of honors and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the California, Montana and Pennsylvania Arts Councils and the Norwegian Government. Compositions such as his award winning Cello Concerto, Kaddish, which the Newark Star-Ledger described as having the “most expressive writing for strings to be heard today,” have been performed in the major concert halls of France, England, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Israel and the United States. His works have received prizes at international competitions and have been selected for performances at festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, the Israel Festival, the Darmstadt Festival for New Music, the International Arts Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania, and the St. Cyprien International Festival of the Arts in France.
In 1985, the Statue of Liberty Committee commissioned Fredrick Kaufman to write a choral work, Mother of Exiles, for the re-dedication ceremonies of the Statue of Liberty. The composition was premiered by the United Nations Chorus at the ceremony and was broadcast worldwide by network television. WE THE PEOPLE 200 of the City of Philadelphia commissioned Kaufman to write his 5th Symphony in 1987 for the 200th anniversary celebration of the Constitution of the United States of America. The event was nationally broadcast on NBC-TV. Critics from the New York Times, the Newark Star-Ledger, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the London Times, the Perpignon Independent and other newspapers around the world have described Kaufman's music as “striking...individual...an interesting combination of overwhelming pathos and infec tious joy...brought one into the realm of musical genius. “The points of departure for Kaufman's writing are often gestures and sound imagery from his own wide ranging background, which includes jazz and Eastern European Jewish folk traditions and a found ation deeply steeped in the classics as well as the avant garde. Among Kaufman's recent projects are a cello concerto for Mark Dobrinsky and the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Philharmonic, a flute composition for Julius Baker, a horn concerto for David Wetherill and the Philadelphia Orchestra, an English horn concerto for Sarah Lambert Bloom and a trumpet concert for Arturo Sandoval.
Renowned artists such as Julius Baker, Susan Starr, Roy Malan, Mark Dobrinsky, Andres Diaz and others have recorded Kaufman's concertos and chamber music and Israeli television has paid tribute to him as composer in the thirty minute documentary film Fredrick Kaufman—Life of an Artist.
Fredrick Kaufman is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the School of Music at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He was formerly Academic Dean of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts of the University of the Arts and has been a member of the faculties of the University of Wisconsin, the University of London and the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. Kaufman is the founder and Artistic Director of the St. Cyprien International Festival of the Arts held in St. Cyprien, France. (2000)
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