About this Artist

MAX LESSER, eighteen, will attend Harvard University this coming fall as a freshman, where he will also participate in the dual master’s program with New England Conservatory. He will graduate LACHSA in June of 2015, where he studies saxophone and improvisation with Walter Smith III. He currently studies composition privately with Sean Friar, and also with Jim Matheson and Sarah Gibson as part of the LA Phil Composer Fellowship Program. His chamber and orchestral works have been premiered by the LA Phil, ensembles at the YoungArts program, and by personal friends. His main musical influences in the classical idiom include Carlo Gesualdo, JS Bach, Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, Gerard Grisey, and Georg Friedrich Haas. Other musical influences include saxophonists John Coltrane, Warne Marsh, and Mark Turner, and rappers such as Biggie Smalls and MF Doom. In his free time he enjoys reading novels and poetry, listening to traditional ethnic-music such as Indonesian gamelan, and attending local underground rap concerts with his friends.