Joseph Horowitz frequently collaborates with the South Dakota Symphony on thematic, cross-disciplinary projects linked to area schools. His previous SDSO projects have included “Dvorak and America,” “Copland and Mexico,” and “Charles Ives’ America.” A cultural historian specializing in the American arts, he pursues parallel careers as a scholar/writer and concert producer. The most recent of his eleven books is “Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music” (2022), linked to six “Dvorak’s Prophecy” documentary films. His forthcoming books are “The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York” (April 2022, his first novel) and “The Propaganda of Freedom: JFK, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and the Cultural Cold War” (Sept. 2023). He regularly produces 50-minute “More than Music” radio documentaries for NPR via the newsmagazine “1A,” heard on over 400 stations nationally (including SDPB in Sioux Falls). He continues to serve as a program curator for orchestras and festivals in all parts of the US.

As Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in the 1990s, Horowitz was a pioneering creator of humanities-infused public programming. These days he also frequently perform as a keyboard accompanist. And he’ll be creating a music/dance work, “Einsamkeit,” collaborating with the bass trombonist David Taylor and the choreographer Igal Perry; it premieres this June in New York City. 

As an advisor to Naxos’s “American Classics” series, he has produced DVD versions of the films “Redes,” “The City,” “The River,” and “The Plow that Broke the Plains” with the soundtracks (Revueltas, Copland, and Thomson) newly recorded. Of his books, “Understanding Toscanini” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, “Wagner Nights: An American History” was named best book of the year by the Society of American Music, and “Classical Music in America: A History” and “Artists in Exile” were both named best books of the year in The Economist.