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SHEILA SILVER (b 1946 )
Sheila Silver is an important and vital voice in
American music today. She has written in a wide range
of media, from solo instrumental works to large
orchestral works, from opera to feature film scores. Her
musical language is a unique synthesis of the tonal and
atonal worlds, coupled with a rhythmic complexity
which is both masterful and compelling. Again and
again, audiences and critics praise her music as
powerful and emotionally charged, accessible, and
masterfully conceived. [Silver speaks a musical
language of her own, one rich in sonority, lyrical
intensity and poetic feeling Chicago Tribune.]
Born in Seattle Washington in 1946, Sheila Silver
began piano studies at the age of five. Upon receiving
her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California
at Berkeley (1968) she was awarded the George Ladd
Prix de Paris for two years study in Europe, where she
worked with Erhard Karkoschka in Stuttgart and
Gyrgy Ligeti in Berlin and Hamburg. She earned her
doctorate from Brandeis University in 1976, where she
studied with Arthur Berger, Harold Shapero and
Seymour Shifrin. Her compositions have been
commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras,
chamber ensembles, and soloists throughout the United
States and Europe, and honours include a Radcliffe
Institute Fellowship (1978), the Rome Prize (1979), and
the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
Composer Award (1986). She has twice been the
winner of the ISCM National Composers Competition,
and other awards and commissions include those from
the Rockefeller Foundation, the Camargo Foundation,
MacDowell Colony, New York State Council of the
Arts, the Barlow Foundation, Paul Fromm Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cary Trust.
Sheila Silvers full length opera The Thief of Love,
featured in New York City Operas 2000 Showcasing
American Composers, was given its fully staged world
premire by the Stony Brook Opera in March 2001, and
she is collaborating with filmmaker John Feldman on a
series of MusicVisions, unique classical music videos
for one or two instruments, video, and tape track. She is
Professor of Music at the State University of New York,
Stony Brook, and her music is published by MMB
Music and Studio 4 Productions and is recorded on
various labels.
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