Ed Harsh Director of Strategic Initiatives and Vice President of the Foundation
1992 - 2000 / 2018 -
Ed Harsh brings to his work at the Kurt Weill Foundation several decades of experience as a composer, writer, arts executive, teacher, and fundraiser. Following completion of degrees in both music composition and musicology, he began his career as the founding Managing Editor of the Kurt Weill Edition, the collected critical edition of Weill’s work. In collaboration with the members of the KWE Editorial Board, he worked to establish the principles and procedures for this pioneering effort, which codified new principles for the preparation of scholarly editions of music theater works. Many of his published writings are related to this project.
In the late 1990s Harsh prepared a reconstructed edition of Weill’s The Eternal Road, leading to its first production since its premiere in 1937. Later he created an oratorio version of the work. The oratorio premiered in Dessau, Germany under the title Die Verheißung and at Carnegie Hall as The Road of Promise.
In the second phase of his career, Harsh built upon experience as the Development Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and as Associate Director of the consulting firm David Bury and Associates to become the President of Meet The Composer, a national organization supporting and advocating on behalf of American new music. In 2011, he led a merger of MTC with the American Music Center to form an expanded and more substantially endowed organization, New Music USA, becoming its founding President and CEO. During this period, Harsh continued his association with the Weill Foundation as a member of the KWE Editorial Board. From 2010 until 2018 Harsh served as a Kurt Weill Foundation Trustee and eventually as Chair of the Board.
Harsh returned to the Foundation in 2018 in his current role of Director of Strategic Initiatives. He is in the process of writing Ambitious Music Theater: A Kurt Weill Revue, a mixed genre book project exploring Kurt Weill’s work in the context of human community, with special note of relevance for future creativity.
