[Heartbeat Opera] is known for producing revisionist interpretations (Dan Schlosberg’s masterfully incisive chamber reductions being perhaps the key element). I’ve never seen the work achieve more genuine (and genuinely troubling) sensuality than here, with the ingenious mix that Schlosberg offered up—eight clarinets, occassionally doubling sax (for the Dance itself), recorder and electric guitar, plus two terrific percussionists... In this intimate rendering, Heartbeat set the bar high for the Met’s upcoming new Salome
Dan Schlosberg’s maverick orchestral arrangement... distills Richard Strauss’s enormous orchestra to eight clarinetists and two percussionists. All play multiple instruments (bass clarinet, recorder and saxophones are in the mix), but the overall timbral similarity creates a weird, claustrophobic, even threatening atmosphere, exacerbated by the smallness of the theater space, with the performers hemmed in by the audience on two sides. It’s Salome unfiltered, uncushioned by strings, exposed with a naked ferocity. All the characters are on the edge, and there is no escape for them
In this disgustingly clever new production, Heartbeat Opera takes one of the most difficult works in the opera canon and turns it inside out. ...Salome is a challenge for a small opera company: how to slim down a huge Strauss orchestra to fit in a small theater. Music director Dan Schlosberg (perhaps the wittiest arranger of his generation) has rescored the opera for eight clarinets, most doubling or tripling on other wind instruments and a percussion team that includes both chimes and bells and drumset. It’s crazy—crazy like Aubrey Beardsley, crazy like Oscar Wilde—and it works
It’s shocking to hear that the ever-enterprising Dan Schlosberg has arranged the opera for eight clarinets. It’s even more shocking that it works so well. Schlosberg’s audacious arrangements are the soul of Heartbeat Opera, one of New York’s most innovative opera companies, and his past work has successfully condensed Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Verdi’s scores for chamber orchestra. But Salome is his boldest and best work yet, his octet of clarinettists (covering a total of 28 instruments) and two percussionists achieving a dazzling range of colour under the watchful eye of conductor Jacob Ashworth. Schlosberg gives the twisted waltz in the Dance of the Seven Veils to the saxophone, lending it a queasy, sinister aura
The most impressive aspect of the production was the transformation of Strauss’ gargantuan score into a chamber opera. Music director Dan Schlosberg reduced the enormous orchestra to eight players of single-reed instruments and two very busy percussionists. Clarinets and other solo winds figure heavily throughout Strauss’ often pointillistic score, and even without strings and brass, the wind band filled the space and captured the original sonorities astonishingly well, with even a suggestion of the era’s emerging cabaret style. ...Strauss’ filigree of themes emerged clearly from the dense ensemble. It was the most skillful musical adaptation I’ve heard from [Heartbeat Opera] over the last 10 years.
Heartbeat’s abbreviated, English language Salome with Dan Schlosberg’s condensed orchestration (and saxophones!) collapses the already succinct opera into a few hard punches to the gut
Indie opera companies, especially Heartbeat Opera, have limited resources and different artistic aims when staging such behemoths [as Strauss’ Salome]: ingenuity, imagination and a touch of genius. As he has repeatedly proven in prior Heartbeat Opera productions, Dan Schlosberg has all three... Schlosberg compressed the massive orchestral sound of the original into a complex, intense arrangement for eight clarinetists playing 28 instruments and two percussionists
The music-making is remarkably fine for a production of this scale—the sound rarely feels attenuated. Credit the music directors Dionne McClain-Freeney and Dan Schlosberg
surprisingly rich orchestrations (by Dan Schlosberg) for a band of just six players
The score has been boldly revised by co-music directors Dionne McClain Freeney and Dan Schlosberg. The former has created strikingly intimate vocal arrangements for the cast of ten, who switch between principal roles, supporting parts, and chorus. Meanwhile, Schlosberg has pared the orchestration from its traditional dozens of players to a six-member band that includes electric guitar. The result is a sonic world as polyglot and surprising as Hammerstein’s libretto, which swerves from low vaudeville yuks to domestic tragedy. ...Besides the canny reduction of forces, the score has been cleverly tweaked to bring those perfumed melodies closer to modern ears. When Julie sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” those poignant vocal lines begin to swing more, take on a smoky R&B swagger
Schlosberg’s orchestrations for six players are terrific, emphasizing the beautiful nuances within Kern’s eternal score (and he’s amazing to watch when your mind wanders)
Musically, SLAYLEM is a delicious witch’s brew. Heartbeat Opera Music Director Dan Schlosberg blends familiar tunes with out-there choices, and as usual, concocts very good arrangements. Wicked, Oklahoma, Into the Woods, The Exorcist theme, and even Scott Joplin’s “Maple Time Rag” all received musical shoutouts in the overture, while the show proper put Penderecki in proximity with arias Don Pasquale and I Puritani. SLAYLEM displayed the breath of Schlosberg’s musical grimoire to excellent effect
...this Figaro was a grand experiment in anarchic play. Thanks to Dan Schlosberg’s deft arrangements, the whole thing came home in 90-ish minutes
📣 Sara Holdren on Little Island’s Anthony Roth Costanzo is The Marriage of Figaro (2024), review:
Rounding out the brain trust is musical director Dan Schlosberg, who...[slimmed] down the arrangement for an eight-piece orchestra, which he conducts with ferocity and precision from behind the keyboard. Virtuosity abounds—and extends into the ensemble
Though The Marriage of Figaro often sprawls over four hours, this is a 100-minute intermission-less version which has countertenor Costanzo in such constant vocal and physical motion, that he is literally hauled offstage on a stretcher following the second of four acts. Imagine the wildest-possible knock-about commedia dell’arte-style production, multiply it by three—and then some. ...However hectic the stage traffic, conductor Dan Schlosberg and the cut-down but mighty eight-member orchestra maintained Mozart’s innate sense of order
a brilliantly demented 100-minute adaptation whose sheer bravado coupled with musical and theatrical inventiveness make it much more than a stunt. With its frenetic, accelerating energy and constant switching of focus, this “Figaro” exemplifies the opera’s revolutionary, topsy-turvy roots... Dan Schlosberg’s typically ingenious orchestral arrangement—for keyboard, four strings, horn, and two clarinets doubling bass clarinet, saxophone and recorder—supplies its own witty commentary; he leads from the keyboard. Dustin Wills’s direction makes it all work, preserving the transgressive spirit of the opera through all the cuts, musical manipulations and speedy comic pacing
Costanzo—with his director, Dustin Wills, and his arranger and conductor, Dan Schlosberg—takes [Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro] to a challenging, chaotic extreme. In this much-trimmed 100-minute Figaro, Costanzo sings all the parts: men and women, nobles and servants, high notes and low. Schlosberg’s arrangement of the score for eight musicians is... resourceful and crisply played. The nocturnal start of Act IV is slyly rendered as cabaret music, with a suave saxophone solo
Never in my life have I seen such a tour-de-force. But it’s not just [Anthony Roth Costanzo]. The direction by Dustin Wills is full of astonishing surprises, the supportive cast of over the top lip-synching clowns are so charming I was completely riveted... Sets, costumes, lighting, dramaturgy, exquisite orchestrations played by brilliant musicians and conducted Dan Schlosberg, a chorus of ARC lookie likey children, there’s even a trampoline—all are spectacular. Also, yes, it was an opera but I didn’t fall asleep once which is a triumph in itself
Tackling the opera’s challenges with palpable gladness, Costanzo sings the servant Figaro, his betrothed Susanna, and a whole palace worth of erotic schemers, as virtuosic lip-synching performers act out the scenes. Aided (abetted?) by the director Dustin Wills and the arranger Dan Schlosberg, Costanzo piles wonder on wonder: for instance, somehow, in “Riconosci in questo amplesso,” six voices soar out of one man (and his looping pedal)
Memorable... bending pitch in a bluesy languor
The “secret sauce” of Heartbeat’s endeavors lies in Dan Schlosberg’s inventive, eclectic and often surprisingly illuminating musical adaptions... with welcomely unexpected touches from electric strings but also saxophone and balalaika. The cuts—down to 100 uninterrupted minutes—were judicious, the [Tatyana] name-day party’s almost Verdian concertato came off surprisingly well musically
📣 Eric Myers (archive) on Schlosberg’s The Extinctionist (2024):
It is a work of remarkable impact… an intimate, small-scale work that delivers a knockout punch to the audience. Schlosberg’s theatrically effective score keeps his audience as unsettled as his heroine. ...There are, as well, moments filled with great tenderness and beauty. In the intimate confines of the venue, one was able to sense a promising new path being forged for contemporary chamber opera
[Schlosberg’s] opera depicts a mind crumbling under the mounting catastrophes of the climate crisis. [His] instrumental writing doesn’t necessarily drive the drama, as opera orchestras often do, but rather plays a part in it, mirroring the cast of four with a quartet. ...the ensemble betrays the woman’s emotions, and anticipates the increasingly sharp turns of her mental state, including with a tense, thumping rhythm like a heartbeat. Approaching the text with patience, Schlosberg repeats words and phrases, and turns the “ha” of laughter into a musical scream
on Heartbeat Opera’s Eugene Onegin (2024):
Schlosberg’s adaptation leans into this self-aware, borderline Brechtian theatricality with a pit band whose sound is reminiscent of “The Threepenny Opera,” if its banjo were replaced with a balalaika. In Act II, Schlosberg warps a joyous waltz into something nightmarish and agonizingly amorphous, an expression of inner torment
on Heartbeat Opera’s Lucia di Lammermoor (2016):
“Lucia di Lammermoor” was set in an asylum and spun from the mind of a patient whose psychology was reflected in Schlosberg’s mercurial arrangement for five instrumentalists
In a tight 75 minutes, the opera deftly seesaws between extremes—Woman’s longing for motherhood and her terror about the future. Schlosberg’s score reflects the centrality of Woman’s anguish: her high-flying, jittery vocal line seems to brush off the vocal efforts of the other characters. The sound of the four-member ensemble (violin/viola, electric guitar, and percussion, led by Mr. Schlosberg from the piano) ranges from delicate transparency to electronic roar
on Heartbeat Opera’s Eugene Onegin (2024):
Schlosberg’s arrangement turned the Act 3 ball into a raucous, Kurt Weill-style cabaret. ...the music [swerves] away from romance and into nightmare
Schlosberg has an uncanny ability to discern the musical gist of an opera and express it in a panoply of sounds as authentic as they are imaginative. ...he achieves alchemy in The Extinctionist with just four players, producing music that is scintillating, transparent and often excruciatingly beautiful
The creators kept the dark, edgy action to just 75 minutes. Schlosberg’s percussive, arhythmic music limns an overwhelming sense of psychological crisis. ...And that music! It’s an embodiment of extreme angst. Schlosberg built it of piano, violin and viola, aggressive percussion, and—especially in one powerful transitional scene—monstrously possessed electric guitar. It’s often disturbing.
Musically, The Extinctionist is exceedingly subtle. With Schlosberg conducting animatedly from the piano, the four-piece band played a tintinnabulation-filled score, the musical equivalent of a biological clock ticking. ...Throughout the opera, [the Woman’s] chorus of “ha ha’s” become increasingly hysterical
📣 Sylvia Korman on Heartbeat Opera’s Eugene Onegin (2024):
the lean and efficient cut, the wild and ever-so-slightly wacky musical arrangement... were totally convincing: a fresh and eloquent new reading of a beloved classic. Unexpected musical touches abounded, like the dreamy, tremolo guitar that gave Olga’s aria an almost country western air, or the raw edge of an electric violin sowing seeds of danger into the party music. The word that springs to mind is “irreverent”—certainly this is no piece for purists—but even the most radical departures in the score felt undertaken with confidence and purpose. ...What was striking was how eloquently the sounds and styles of the music matched the aims and aesthetics of the production as a whole
Schlosberg has subjected the work to his usual radically inventive reorchestration... The band brought out the exuberant inventiveness of Schlosberg’s crazy-quilt arrangement
Schlosberg’s arrangement for nine musicians captures the essence of Tchaikovsky’s score, with balalaika and saxophone adding fascinating new colour. It’s not a straight transcription—there are eerie, dissonant passages with gliding electric violin and guitar accompanying the singers, creating a nightmarish atmosphere. Triquet’s couplets, reassigned to Olga, veer from cabaret act to horror movie—it’s different and unexpected
Heartbeat Opera [is] able to breathe new life into the opera canon, with only 9 musicians in the “pit.” Schlosberg’s vibrant new arrangement for Tchaikovsky’s beloved Eugene Onegin features electric violin, electric bass, electric guitar, and saxophone to create moods akin to the most demonstrative in the best film scoring
Schlosberg has been called [Heartbeat Opera’s] “secret sauce” for his incredibly skillful—and also playful—arrangements of the scores, often incorporating jazz, bluegrass, and electric rock elements when you least expect them
beyond the ripped-from-the-headlines concepts stands the wizard of [Heartbeat Opera’s] operation: the music director and arranger Dan Schlosberg, whose imaginative chamber orchestrations have the capacity to reinvent opera’s most beloved scores... you will want to hear what kind of ingenuity Schlosberg applies to the score
Led by conductor Daniel Schlosberg, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra [is] the real deal
ingenious arrangement... not to mention [Schlosberg’s] expert playing on piano
seamlessly tailored 100-minute adaptation stripped the work to its essence, exposing a story that, shorn of its Italianate excesses, is relatable and shockingly violent... this immersive art-imitates-life-imitates-art framing device sent the dramatic stakes through the roof. Schlosberg’s evocative orchestral reduction featured three cellos—no violins—plus flute, horn, piano, bass and a particularly expressive muted trumpet
Schlosberg, with the vision of a master sculptor, chipped away at Verdi’s score to reveal new contours and continuities in the music and action. He didn’t so much reduce Verdi’s orchestration as reinvent it for an ensemble of six musicians (including himself as conductor and pianist). They played like a band possessed, and the use of electronics added an otherworldly texture bubbling with disruption. It was flat-out brilliant.
Highbow and Brilliant: the genuinely scary twist in Montag at Soho Rep
Radically transformed, too, is the score, arranged by Schlosberg for two pianos, two horns, two cellos and percussion, with the multitasking (and nearly scene-stealing) Schlosberg onstage conducting from the keyboard
Schlosberg strips the full orchestra down... the effect is strikingly intimate and imaginative, texturally effective, and also slightly claustrophobia-inducing
Schlosberg’s musical arrangement for just seven instruments is a small miracle of both reduction and rethinking. Schlosberg [uses] that structure as a pliable framework to situate the work in the here and now
Radical, from a musical point of view, is Schlosberg’s reduction of Beethoven’s symphonic orchestra... Schlosberg’s singular combo manages to hint at the subtexts Beethoven conveys with his infinitely broader instrumental palette... there’s wizardry in that
To paraphrase [Anthony Roth] Costanzo, there aren’t many pianists who can play both Liszt and Gershwin to perfection. Of course, Brahms, Debussy, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff and others have to be added to the list
Highbow and Brilliant: Justin Vivian Bond (with Anthony Roth Costanzo) in Only an Octave Part
Schlosberg's rhythmically complicated instrumental music is... compelling and evocative
Nimble arrangements by Nico Muhly and Daniel Schlosberg flit seamlessly from plucked strings to erotic disco beats
Schlosberg’s creepily brilliant musical arrangement
Highbow and Brilliant: Heartbeat Opera’s deconstructed online staging of Verdi’s Macbeth, Lady M
Music director Schlosberg has effectively transformed Weber’s colorful score for seven players, into a collage of electronic and acoustic sounds, in effect a recomposition... Here was a rare presentation of the work that would define 19th-century German opera, made topical in a way that both respected Weber and stretched him
Intimate, intense and contemporary... rearranging canonical works musically and paring them down to their concentrated cores and stripping away centuries of expectations and tradition
Heartbeat’s secret weapon... may well be the chamber orchestrations of its efficient co-music director and arranger Daniel Schlosberg, who leads members of Cantata Profana and an alternating cast of singers in Weber’s moody score
The show’s most inventive elements are musical: Daniel Schlosberg’s lively arrangement for seven instrumentalists (most of whom double or triple), and the recomposition of the supernatural Wolf Canyon scene, for which Mr. Schlosberg and William Gardiner devised a creepy electronic soundscape of noises and wails that would do nicely for a horror movie. ...Schlosberg’s deft arrangement and his fine ensemble, which he led from the keyboard, supplied a lot of entertainment
The score was arranged (and conducted) by Daniel Schlosberg for a handful of instrumentalists and electronics, with some of the most imaginative doubling you'll ever hear from the pit band at an opera. Schlosberg and William Gardiner recomposed what is probably the opera's most notable scene seamlessly, effectively—and terrifyingly—done
Schlosberg... brought a marvelous variety of touch and play-anything technique
Schlosberg was superb, capturing the fleeting emotions of the [Ned Rorem’s] songs deftly and performing the dramatic Interlude at the apex of the cycle with virtuosic aplomb
I saw “Fidelio,” and was blindsided by its impact. The composer-pianist Daniel Schlosberg has a flair for cutting and repurposing famous operas without mangling them
To bring [Fidelio] to life in the era of Black Lives Matter, [director Ethan] Heard and Schlosberg are setting their production within today’s American criminal justice system. Schlosberg has arranged Beethoven’s score... to emphasize musically the opera’s story of heroism amid darkness
Highbow and Brilliant: Heartbeat Opera transposes Beethoven’s prison opera Fidelio to the Black Lives Matter era
Feed the Snakes by Daniel Schlosberg [is] heartbreakingly lyrical
The devotion to Puccini’s music was evident in the sensitive arrangement of the score (by the co-music director Daniel Schlosberg), richly detailed yet delicate... I found the jazz-infused arrangement very insightful into the colorings and seductive allure of Bizet’s score. [Schlosberg] also played a mean accordion
What’s so pleasing about Heartbeat Opera’s Butterfly is how well its artistic intentions dovetail with its limited means. The orchestra is cut down to an arrangement (by the composer Daniel Schlosberg) for harp and string quintet that recalls the mellifluous elegance of the original
Schlosberg’s score turns deftly from bittersweet to sickly sweet and back again, from innocent to troubled to dangerous to dead in just a few measures. Extra creepy, cosmic-horrific, mind-breaking... manifests in ways the original could never quite delve into deeply enough. We got an imaginary episode of Twin Peaks directed by a skilled young composer, everything feels darker, slower, stranger, a little more mysterious and a lot more disturbing
Schlosberg’s scoring—whistling tones of bowed vibraphone and cymbals, the harplike sound of strummed piano strings, the slide of a shot glass on an electric guitar—put a modernist frame around the action, although the substance of Donizetti’s score came through
Radical transformational... ingenious rescoring by Schlosberg
Schlosberg... composed pandemonium and quiescence intoxicated by life. Opening with an eclectic ragtime meets Dixieland Buster Keaton-esque free-for-all where the intentionality of everything is questionable, Schlosberg dissolved our emotional defenses with laughter and took them captive. Two Remarks... made me feel alive
witty arrangement by Schlosberg