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Joseph R. Olefirowicz was born in Methuen, Massachusetts in 1972. Shortly after his 1995
debut with the Oswego Opera in New York (Menotti's The Medium & William
Schuman's The Mighty Casey), he was appointed music director of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express in Bochum, Germany - starting his career as a crossover artist in demand.
Following tenure in Bochum, he was appointed music director of commercial musical theatres in Stuttgart and Berlin: where he conducted the original productions of Miss Saigon, Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Disney's Beauty and the Beast (as guest). Since his debut at the Berlin State Opera, at the opening gala of the 2002 European Press and Radio Ball (Lucia Aliberti & the Deutsches Filmorchester), he has not only furthered his career as a classical conductor, but also remains active as a sought-after concert organist and collaborative pianist.
In 2003, he gave his European opera debut with the seldom-performed Cherubini opera Lodoïska at the Nordhausen Opera in Germany, later conducting a wide array of operatic, symphonic, ballet and operetta/musical theatre literature during his tenure there.
During 2004 he served in Budapest and London as Music & Choral Supervisor for the NBC/Hallmark filming of Menken & Ahrens' A Christmas Carol. He received an Emmy Craft Citation from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, recognizing his artistic contribution to this film's music team, whose music director Michael Kosarin won the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction.
Olefirowicz has carved a special niche working on new productions of established musical theatre and operetta classics, in the orchestration and arranging of new choral, dance, and orchestral passages created specifically for such productions. Work of this nature gained international attention with the critically-acclaimed revival of Ralph Benatzky's 1929 Operetta Die Drei Musketiere at the Nordhausen Opera - where he was acclaimed by the press as 2006 Operetta Conductor of the Year.
This production's success secured the interest of the Volksoper Wien, who invited Olefirowicz to conduct Jerry Bock's classic Fiddler on the Roof (Anatevka), making his 2008 debut in Vienna. He returns to the Volksoper Wien in 2009, as music director and conductor of the new production of Frank Loesser's Broadway classic Guys and
Dolls.
A selection of repertoire:
Opera: Aïda, Carmen, Cosi fan Tutte, Die Zauberflöte, Madama Butterfly, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Tosca, Der Freischütz
Operetta: Frau Luna, La Belle Hélène, Die lustige Witwe, The Student Prince, Das Land des Lächelns
Musical Theatre: The Music Man, Carousel, A Chorus Line, The Most Happy Fella, She Loves Me, Chess, Anything Goes, Jesus Christ Superstar, Mame
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