Ezra Laderman

One of the most successful American composers of the third quarter of the 20th century, Ezra Laderman wrote music in many genres and styles. He was also an important educator. The son of Polish Jewish immigrants, Laderman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29, 1924. He was already improvising on the family piano at age four, and he began composing formally at seven. Laderman attended the High School of Music and Art in New York, but his career as a composer was interrupted by service in World War II. As a radio operator with the 69th Infantry Division, he saw action in central Germany and was with his unit when it discovered evidence of the Holocaust near Leipzig. After his discharge, he wrote a Leipzig Symphony that gained attention among musicians in the military. Returning to New York, Laderman enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he studied with Stefan Wolpe and Miriam Gideon and earned a bachelor's degree in 1950. He went on to Columbia University, studying with Otto Luening and earning a master's in 1952. His career was helped along by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 and Rome Prizes from the American Academy in Rome in 1964 and 1983. Laderman wrote many large-scale orchestral and choral works beginning in the 1950s, answering commissions from many of the major American orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He wrote in styles ranging from tonal to serial, but in 1975, he was commissioned to compose an organ work and responded with a set of 25 preludes in different styles. At this point, he realized that he could combine styles within a single work, and his later music, such as the opera Marilyn (1993), about Marilyn Monroe, was eclectic in inspiration. Soloists who commissioned his works included Jean-Pierre Rampal, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax. Laderman continued composing almost until the end of his long life. His Partita No. 2 for solo cello was premiered by Ole Akahoshi just a year before Laderman's death at age 90, on February 28, 2015, in New Haven, CT. Laderman was a professor of composition and senior composer-in-residence at the State University of New York at Binghamton from 1971 to 1982. He became the director of the National Endowment for the Arts music program in 1979, and he served a three-year term as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters beginning in 2006. Laderman became dean of the Yale School of Music in 1989 and continued to teach composition at Yale until 2014. About 20 of his works have been recorded, including his String Quartets Nos. 6, 7, and 8 by the Cassatt Quartet in 2002.
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