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Rob Morsberger is a singer-songwriter and classically-trained composer.
In addition to his own records, his sideman credits include Jules Shear, Loudon Wainwright III, Dan Zanes, The Roches, Crash Test Dummies and Marshall Crenshaw. He is composer for the award-winning PBS series NOVAscienceNOW, currently in its fifth season. Other scoring/arranging credits include Masterpiece Theater, Boardwalk Empire, NOVA and Frontline.
The son of an itinerant painter/fine artist, Morsberger moved to England as a child and attended secondary school in Oxford. He studied bassoon, piano and composition and was awarded the sole entrance scholarship, for most outstanding applicant in music, at Edinburgh University in 1977. There he studied with composers Kenneth Leighton and Edward Harper, among others. In Scotland Morsberger also began apprenticing with local funk and jazz bands, worked as a dance accompanist and began receiving commisions for original scores. He composed Randombach 3, a three-movement electro-acoustic work for Scottish Ballet in 1983, conducted his own orchestral works in the Edinburgh Queens Hall and elsewhere, created an improvised dramatic underscore for BBC Radio Scotland (with clarinettist Dick Lee) and worked regularly with experimental saxophonist/composer Steve Kettley. He graduated with the sole first (summa cum laude) awarded in 1985.
Moving to New York City, Morsberger landed a songwriting publishing deal with Famous Music/Paramount and began composing for national television, with clients including PBS, ABC, CBS, A&E, National Geographic and others. His background in classical music, coupled with an active engagement in and genuine love for a wide range of vernacular styles, made him a versatile musical craftsman. He devoted many years to mastering the tools and techniques of electronic musicmaking and the effective use of synthesizers and samplers. Orchestral scores became a particular area of interest and expertise.
In 1995 he forged an ongoing collaboration with guitarist Jon Herington (Steely Dan, Madeleine Peyroux), bassist Paul Ossola (Saturday Night Live, Levon Helm) and drummer Robin Gould (Michael Franks, Carly Simon), with Morsberger on vocals and keyboards. Their third release, A Periodic Rush of Waves (2009), was produced by Stewart Lerman (The Roches, Dar Williams) and features cameo appearances by songwriter greats Jules Shear and Marshall Crenshaw. A fourth album, The Chronicle of A Literal Man, was released in May 2010 and received stellar reviews in USA Today, The Boston Globe and Herald, and more. Writing in the Boston Herald, renowned critic Don Convey stated that the “album is the kind of hyperliterate, pop-inflected singer-songwriter outing that went out of style when Warren Zevon died. And….he can write a hook that could make angels weep.”
Morsberger lives with his family in the lower Hudson Valley, just north of New York City.
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