{"id":2433496,"date":"2026-05-26T23:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T23:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2433496"},"modified":"2026-05-26T23:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T23:06:23","slug":"new-romance-the-music-of-nathan-henninger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/new-romance-the-music-of-nathan-henninger\/","title":{"rendered":"New romance: the music of Nathan Henninger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-pl-link-src=\"https:\/\/bachtrack.com\/Article body\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cCinema of the mind.\u201d This is how composer <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nathanhenninger.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nathan Henninger<\/a> describes his music \u2013 theatrical, emotional, motivated, scenic. The musical landscape is paced like drama: scenes of exposition, conflict and resolution. Even without imagery, \u201cthere\u2019s a certain shorthand \u2013 of rhetoric and gestures \u2013 that whether one is trained in music or not, there can be a kind of cultural recognition on a broad scale.\u201d <\/p>\n<div style=\"width:760px\" class=\"article-inline-image-nowrap article-inline-image-setwidth\">\n<div class=\"pil-image-outer\">\n<div data-width=\"1040\" data-height=\"680\" data-sweetspoth=\"50\" data-sweetspotv=\"50\" data-key=\"488374\" style=\"height:0;padding-bottom:calc(65.384615384615% + 0px)\" class=\"pil-container article-inline-image-nowrap pil-fill pil-nocaption-nocredit plcarousel-has-big-image\">\n<div class=\"pil-wrapper\">\n<picture><source srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.bachtrack.com\/wfiles\/488373-dscf3793.smaller.webp 600w,https:\/\/cdn.bachtrack.com\/wfiles\/488373-dscf3793.webp\" type=\"image\/webp\"\/><\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Nathan Henninger<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Viktor Szende | NateChet Music<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Henninger\u2019s music might well be representative of a broader set of trends occurring across contemporary classical music in North America. Taking influence from film scoring as well as orchestral and operatic classics of the 19th and 20th centuries, he fits alongside other composers since the 1990s who have been looking for emotional directness, recognisability and theatricality in their music. In particular, Henninger gravitates to the influence of French music, which itself left a lasting impact on North American composers of the 20th century, especially those who studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re hearing a magical 1950s radio, hearing Edith Piaf or jazz from the Umbrellas of Cherbourg,\u201d Henninger says, describing his recent piece <em>Romanza <\/em>for piano and orchestra. \u201cWhen we think of love \u2013 or Paris\u2026 certainly elements of 50s jazz and Hollywood are playing a role in <em>Romanza<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"pl-iframe-holder\">\n<div style=\"width:100%;position:relative\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nathan Henninger - Romanza for Strings, Percussion and Piano\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ys8V5-w_5xA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Nathan Henninger conducts <i>Romanza<\/i> with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra and pianist\u00a0Marouan Benabdallah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Henninger\u2019s father, Richard Henninger, was a composer too: a Professor of Composition at the University of Toronto. Frequently involved with the music department\u2019s electronic music studio, his music of the late 1960s was atonal and structuralist, and he later transitioned to software development after studying in Stanford University.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cI was born well after that,\u201d Nathan recalls. \u201cThe father that I know is a bit different from my father, the composer. I grew up with a guy who was all about opera and Bach, choir and theatre \u2013 he loved Gilbert and Sullivan. I think the music that he would write today is probably very different from the music that he wrote then.\u201d While there is a stylistic break between the elder and younger Henningers\u2019 musics, his father nonetheless continues to leave an impression. \u201cI learned so much \u2013 not only from his understanding of the orchestra, but the ideas and conversations about what music can do.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Born in Toronto, Henninger was immersed in music from an early age and studied piano and french horn. Majoring in music composition at Pomona College, he later pursued further studies at Juilliard. The influence of his psychologist mother was also strong, and Henninger\u2019s interest in psychological and communicative aspects of music might be indebted to her. \u201cI think it underlies language \u2013 it predates language,\u201d he says. \u201cMusic has a real power to bring us into memory, and those hard-to-articulate parts of our brain, the way we process our experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"width:760px\" class=\"article-inline-image-nowrap article-inline-image-setwidth\">\n<div class=\"pil-image-outer\">\n<p>Nathan Henninger with audio producer Anton Langer<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Viktor Szende | NateChet Music<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">After moving to New York City to study at Juilliard, Henninger took up an unusual position: communications work at the United Nations. As well as working with professional and collegiate choirs, and studying piano with <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/bachtrack.com\/review-taka-kigawa-boulez-ligeti-poisson-rouge-new-york-september-2021\">Taka Kigawa<\/a>, Henninger was working in the private office of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cI played the Brahms <em>Intermezzo<\/em> in A major, Op.118 at a party back in 2008. [Ban\u2019s] special assistant, Mr Yoon, cornered me in front of the elevator and said, \u2018Nathan, Mr Piano Man, will you play at the staff party this Christmas?\u2019 I didn\u2019t think it would be too bad, but it ended up being at the Secretary-General\u2019s residence: palatial, hardwood floors, chandeliers, and every single member of staff had to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The experience with diplomacy and communication at UN might have left their impression too. Henninger describes music as social and psychological, as well as communicative. \u201cMusic can play a role in society, where people are coming to concerts, or supporting orchestras, because they\u2019re feeling a vital sense of what music can do for them. Music is, in a way, acting as a healing force.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">After a foray into photography, during the Coronavirus pandemic, Henninger found himself returning to composition in earnest. He received guidance and encouragement from composers and arrangers including Nan Schwartz and Conrad Pope. <em>Five Scenes for Orchestra<\/em>, essentially his first large-scale composition, emerged from this period of reflection and study.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pl-iframe-holder\">\n<div style=\"width:100%;position:relative\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nathan Henninger - Five Scenes for Orchestra: Scene 1 Misterioso\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2JNDwgzV3Ys?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Nathan Henninger\u2019s <i>Five Scenes for Orchestra<\/i> recorded by the\u00a0Scoring Berlin Orchestra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cI felt that really, for the first time in my life, everything was brought together. That all my other compositions, the things I\u2019d been working on \u2013 everything came together. That this felt like a world that I wanted to explore,\u201d Henninger says. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">With sections contrasting in dramatic character, swift changes, mixtures of harmonic language and texture \u2013 including, in <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=96bpxoe3ahY\" target=\"_blank\">Scene Four<\/a>, dissonance and harshness \u2013 Henninger\u2019s <em>Scenes <\/em>owe much to the theatrical and dramatic lineage he\u2019s adopted. Schwartz and Pope, a couple, both write their own music for film, but are also part of the wider film scoring community, orchestrating for John Williams, James Horner and Howard Shore, among others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cNow I\u2019m working on my first symphony \u2013 it\u2019s much in the same language, but trying to go deeper and longer, exploring things more,\u201d Henninger says.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width:760px\" class=\"article-inline-image-nowrap article-inline-image-setwidth\">\n<div class=\"pil-image-outer\">\n<p>Nathan Henninger conducting in Budapest<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Viktor Szende | NateChet Music<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Film and theatre music are also an influence on <em>Romanza<\/em>, which harks back to Morricone as well as Gershwin \u2013 and Puccini too. \u201cI think when you hear those old scratchy RCA Victor recordings, there\u2019s a kind of sense memory of people going to the opera, and really taking in the melodies of these operas. When we hear the music of that era, from the early 1900s to the 1930s, there\u2019s a sense of a lost world,\u201d Henninger says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cIt\u2019s almost like there\u2019s something in the collective consciousness where, when you hear a Puccini opera, you can\u2019t ignore the fact of the sheer <em>quantity<\/em> of human beings that\u00a0have listened to it,\u00a0through the development of recording technology\u2026 Think of a grandmother in a kitchen with an old radio in the 1930s, listening to <em>La boh\u00e8me<\/em>, or the beginning of Act 3 of <em>Turandot<\/em>\u2026 I think music is about this kind of shared human experience. That\u2019s what I\u2019m really interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Taking a theatrical and communicative approach to musical expression seems to come naturally to Henninger. \u201cI remember doing theatre exercises in college once where people would be doing Shakespeare, and the teachers would say: Okay, now I want part of the class to mime around the actors doing speeches. I think music can do a similar thing. A flute might be playing a melody, and other instruments are making a wordless comment or observation. Or when something horrible or harsh happens, there might be something very soft, an observation which follows it. And I think this observation, this echo, it can teach us. It teaches us how to feel.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"width:760px\" class=\"article-inline-image-nowrap article-inline-image-setwidth\">\n<div class=\"pil-image-outer\">\n<p>Budapest Scoring Orchestra recording <i>Romanza<\/i>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Viktor Szende | NateChet Music<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cIf you\u2019re telling a story, it can also be a kind of reflection of an internal state,\u201d Henninger says, speaking again about <em>Romanza<\/em>. \u201cYou have this kind of churning feeling of: <em>I\u2019m so afraid I\u2019m going to lose you<\/em>. And if that\u2019s the case, then I\u2019m just going to give my all, because I\u2019m going to lose everything. It\u2019s a dramatic moment, but is it because of something happening in the physical world, or is it a more internal kind of anxiety? That anxiety building is what leads to action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Even the melodic shapes in the work are interpreted with a certain amount of theatre. \u201cThe opening gesture, going down and then reaching up, and suspending and not knowing what to do. And finally being met with the melody completing by dropping down. When you drop down it\u2019s like there\u2019s a soft landing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Henninger\u2019s experiences with opera and music theatre, both in youth and later as a professional, were clearly formative. In Lake Arrowhead, California, he was involved leading community musical theatre, in a programme involving over 200 people. \u201cWe were putting on musicals, doing pit orchestra and weekend rehearsals \u2013 every show would have around eight performances. I did really feel of all my experiences there were critical: I learned how to deal with every kind of problem you can have working with musicians. Now I have a certain relaxed confidence about it \u2013 I have a sense memory, working countless hours with kids, adults, teenagers, dealing with every sort of problem under the sun!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">For those outside of North America, curious about a contemporary classical music scene with its own set of particularities, the theatricality and sincerity of Henninger\u2019s music is a window onto a world. <\/p>\n<p><em><br \/><\/em><em>Romanza is <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nathanhenninger.com\/new-release\" target=\"_blank\">out now on CD and available to stream and download<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This article was sponsored by NCH Records.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source bachtrack.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cCinema of the mind.\u201d This is how composer Nathan Henninger describes his music \u2013 theatrical, emotional, motivated, scenic. The musical landscape is paced like drama: scenes of exposition, conflict and resolution. Even without imagery, \u201cthere\u2019s a certain shorthand \u2013 of rhetoric and gestures \u2013 that whether one is trained in music or not, there can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2433497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2433496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/New-romance-the-music-of-Nathan-Henninger.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433498,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433496\/revisions\/2433498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2433497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}