Composers

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging in influence and inspiration, encompassing solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. From scores for dance, to compositions for young people, to multidisciplinary and collaborative works, Al-Zand’s music is diverse in both its subject matter and its audience. It explores connections between music and other arts, and draws inspiration from varied sources such as graphic art, myths and fables, folk music of the world, film, spoken word, jazz, and his own Middle Eastern heritage.

Samuel Adler was born March 4, 1928 in Mannheim, Germany and came to the United States in 1939. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2001, and then inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in October 2008. In 2018 he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (first class), the highest civilian award given by the German government. He is the composer of over 400 published works, including five operas, six symphonies, 17 concerti, eight string quartets, five oratorios, and many other orchestral, band, chamber and choral works, and songs, which have been performed all over the world.

A pianist who "can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard" (Chicago Sun-Times) and a composer who writes "with uncommon imagination" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), James Adler's extensive list of compositions is headed by Memento mori: An AIDS Requiem.

DANIEL ADAMS (b. 1956, Miami FL) is a Professor of Music at Texas Southern University in Houston. Adams holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music from the University of Miami (1981) and a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University (1978). He served as the College Music Society Board Member for Composition from 2015 through 2017.

Composer and conductor Lee Actor (b. 1952) was one of five composers selected in November 2014 as an “Honored Artist of the American Prize”, the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed. He has won a number of awards for his compositions, most recently for Dance Rhapsody, winner of the Austin Civic Orchestra Composition Competition and second place winner of the 2011 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, Redwood Fanfare, a winner of the 2009 Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra Fanfare Competition, and Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, the First Prize Winner in the 2007 International Horn Society Composition Contest.

Eliane Aberdam was born in Nancy, France. She studied piano and theory at the Conservatoire National de Region in Grenoble (1972-1981). She completed her undergraduate studies in composition at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Israel, where she studied with Mark Kopytman. In 1989, she entered the graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied with George Crumb, and obtained her master’s degree in 1992. She completed her Ph.D. in Composition at U.C. Berkeley.