PAUL SALERNI  

Composer Paul Salerni’s music pulses “with life, witty musical ideas and instrumental color (Philadelphia Inquirer)” and has been described by The New York Times as “impressive” and “playful.” Salerni’s song cycles and chamber music have been widely performed in Europe, China, the United States, and Canada, and he has had orchestral commissions from the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the Cape Cod Symphony, and the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, among others. Salerni is the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Lehigh, a winner of Lehigh’s highest acknowledgment of teaching excellence (the Stabler Prize), and the past Chair of the Suzuki Association of the Americas Board of Directors. An expert in the music of his teacher Earl Kim, he has presented Kim’s music as a lecturer, conductor, and pianist at the Kennedy Center, the Aspen Festival, the Dall’Abaco Conservatory in Verona, Italy, the Great Mountains Music Festival, and in radio and television broadcasts in Korea. He is currently writing a second one-act opera on a libretto by Kate Light. That new opera is an adaptation of a Dick Van Dyke TV Show episode written and produced by Carl Reiner.