Donald Rubinstein

Donald Rubinstein has balanced an array of creative identities throughout his extensive professional life, functioning as a singer-songwriter, pianist, jazz experimentalist, soundtrack composer, and beat-style poet. In the mid-'70s he pursued studies at the University of Washington before attending Berklee, where he formed a friendship with guitarist Bill Frisell, and later Columbia. His initial breakthrough arrived through scoring a pair of films directed by horror specialist George Romero: the contemporary vampire story Martin in 1977 and the unconventional motorcycle drama Knightriders in 1981. The second of those features featured future Oscar nominee Ed Harris, who later emerged as one of Rubinstein's most consistent champions and patrons. Throughout the '80s he maintained assorted employment while contributing music to the television programs Tales from the Darkside and Monsters, in addition to several musical theater works and the 1989 poetry-and-sketch collection Haunt from an Early Island. That same year Harris served as executive producer on Rubinstein's debut collection of original songs, The Witness.

Rubinstein's profile expanded noticeably toward the close of the '90s. His well-received stage work Strum Road received a film adaptation in 1997, the year he also issued the duo recording Time Again alongside his former Berklee associate Bill Frisell, by then an established modern jazz innovator. Two solo releases, Scars & Dreams and Music for Ocean Travel, appeared in 1998, while a country-tinged project with Zony Mash titled A Man Without Love came out on Blue Horse. The next year included a composer's residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts together with the song cycle Maya. In 2000 Rubinstein delivered another Blue Horse album, The Long Parade, which incorporated elements of folk, blues, classical, and avant-garde jazz. He simultaneously supplied scores for radio, among them NPR's The Greatest Blues Singer That Ever Lived, for television such as the German production The Summer of My Deflowering, and for multiple dance ensembles. A further collaboration, The Painted Stranger with Steve Deutsch, surfaced in 2001. Beginning in 2002 Rhombus Records initiated reissues of portions of Rubinstein's catalog, opening with the Frisell partnership Time Again; Maya and The Painted Stranger were scheduled to follow in 2003.