About
Max Caplan is a classical and jazz composer and pianist based in the New York State Capital Region. He holds a Master of Music in Composition from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, CT, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Classics from Union College in Schenectady, NY. His compositional instructors have included Hilary Tann, Robert Carl, and Larry Alan Smith.
Max has performed with numerous Capital Region groups including the Musicians of Ma'alwyck, Quintocracy, the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra, and Albany Pro Musica. He is a frequent guest on the Eddie-Award-winning "Jazz Vespers" series at the First Reformed Church in Schenectady.
Max's compositional works have included several commissions by the Musicians of Ma’alwyck, including a one-act chamber opera, Aleda: The Flight of the Suff Birdwomen (2018), for which he wrote both the music and libretto. The opera’s score was praised in the Albany Times Union as “invigorating and inspiring” and the libretto as “highly effective.”
Max holds instructor and accompanist positions at several Capital Region institutions. He is an Affiliated Artist at Union College, providing piano instruction to undergraduate students, and an Adjunct Instructor of piano and composition at SUNY Schenectady. He is an accompanist at Union College, SUNY Schenectady, Congregation Gates of Heaven in Niskayuna, and First Reformed Church in Schenectady.