American composer Paul Schoenfield wrote in a wide variety of genres from oratorio and opera to music for amplified violin, piano, and drum set. His largest body of work is for varied chamber ensembles, most of which include challenging parts for the piano, his own instrument. Schoenfield has received numerous commissions and awards, including those from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Composers Forum; and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his song cycle Camp Songs. He has been inspired by American, British, and Slovakian folk music, and has drawn particularly on Jewish Chassidic and Klezmer music in the exploration of his own roots.

Schoenfield’s varied interests led him to study mathematics (in which he also holds a degree from Carnegie Mellon) and Hebrew, and he once lived on a kibbutz in Israel. For many years he divided his time between homes in Israel and in the United States, where he was a longtime composition professor at the University of Michigan.

Café Music, in three movements—fast, slow, very fast—has proved to be one of Schoenfield’s most popular pieces because of its witty banter and soulful expressiveness, all in an engaging mix of styles. The composer wrote the following about the work: “The idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis. Murray’s employs a house trio which plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music—music that could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray’s. For example, early twentieth-century American, Viennese, light classical, Gypsy, and Broadway styles are all represented. A paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement. Café Music was commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) and received its premiere during a SPCO chamber concert in January 1987.”

—©Jane Vial Jaffe