EZRA LADERMAN

LADERMAN--Ezra.

New Haven CT. On Saturday night February 28th 2015, Professor Emeritus Ezra Laderman died at age 90. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Aimlee Laderman, and children Isaiah Laderman, Jacob Laderman, and Rachel Laderman, and grandchildren Lael Laderman LaRanger, Bezia Laderman, Irit Laderman, Ephraim Laderman, Shoshana Bar Asher, Ariel Donnette, Jason Donnette, and Sophia Laderman, and great-grandson Micha'El Bar Asher. Ezra was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29, 1924. The son of Polish immigrants, he began improvising at the piano at age four, and he began composing at age seven. He attended the Ethical Culture School, and then New York City's High School of Music and Art, where at the age of fifteen he performed his piano concerto with the school's orchestra. He served as a radio operator with the 69th Infantry Division during World War II from 1943 through 1946. While part of the army of occupation he wrote and conducted the "Leipzig Symphony". At Brooklyn College and Columbia University he worked with acclaimed composers Stefan Wolpe, Miriam Gideon and Otto Luening and Douglas S. Moore, graduating in 1952. He met Aimlee at the 116th St stop of the IRT, and married her the next year. He was Chairman of the American Music Center, Director of Music Programs at the National Endowment of the Arts in the Carter administration, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was elected president from 2006-2009. Ezra served as Professor of Composition at Yale University from 1988 to his retirement last summer, July 1, 2014, and was Dean of the School of Music from 1989-1995. While raising his family, Ezra resided in Teaneck, New Jersey, and later moved with Aimlee to New Haven, Connecticut. Summers were spent in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, composing, playing tennis, attending scientific lectures, and relaxing with family and friends. Laderman's compositions reflect a fusion between tonally based materials and nontonal elements. In addition to operatic and symphonic works, Laderman also wrote numerous chamber music, concertos, string quartets, solo instrumental pieces, and vocal works. His works included twelve string quartets, eleven concertos, and eight symphonies; six dramatic oratorios, music for dance, seven operas, and music for two Academy Award-winning films. CBS TV commissioned numerous works. Ezra collaborated with authors Norman Rosten, Joe Darion, Archibald MacLeish, Earnest Kinoy, Robert Pinsky, and conductors Mistislav Rostropovich, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Alfredo Antonini, Sidney Harth, Sergiu Comissiona, Carlo Maria Giulini and others. He received commissions from the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Leipzig Orchester, Sao Paulo State Symphonic Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Woodwind Quintet, the National, Louisville, Dallas, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Houston, CBS, RAI, Jerusalem and Chicago Symphonies and numerous other regional and national orchestras. He has written for such internationally renowned artists as Samuel Baron, Toby Appel, Leonard Arner, Eugene List, Erica Morini, Bernie Garfield, Peter Frankl, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Yo-Yo Ma, Ransom Wilson, Emanuel Ax, Elmar Oliveira, Frank Morelli, Jean Erdman, Jos Limn, David Shifrin, Aldo Parisot, Sherrill Milnes, Judith Raskin, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Vermeer, Concord, Juilliard, Lenox, Alard, Colorado and Tokyo String Quartets, among others. His compositions can be heard on the New World, CRI and Albany labels. He is published by Oxford University Press, Presser and Schirmer. In the past year he has had many performances, among them Benjamin Verdery "On Vineyard Sound", Ole Akahoshi premiering "Partita for 'Cello Number Two", and he developed the oratorio "Voices" with poet Robert Pinsky. Committed to teaching, Laderman held positions at Sarah Lawrence College and the State University of New York at Binghamton before joining the composition faculty at Yale University. He held residencies at the Bennington Composers Conference, the American Academy in Rome, and at the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio. Among his numerous awards, Laderman received three Guggenheim Fellowships and the Prix de Rome. Ezra had a passion for life heard through his music and greatly appreciated by his family and many close friends. While he had many interests -he was an accomplished pianist, avid fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and dearly loved father and grandfather -the greatest passion of his life was his wife Aimlee, with whom he shared everything in a long and fulfilling life. Contributions may be made to the Yale School of Music for the Ezra Laderman Composition Prize. Yale School of Music, PO Box 208246, New Haven, CT.