NEWS RELEASE
February 7, 2006 -- The composer Ezra Laderman has been enthusiastically elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, announced Louis Auchincloss, chair of the Academy's Nominating Committee. Mr. Laderman, who was inducted into the Academy in 1991, follows painter Philip Pearlstein in a three-year term as president. After Philip Pearlstein handed over the gavel to Ezra Laderman in January, the new president expressed his delight with this opportunity to serve the organization which held great meaning for him in its fostering of work by younger artists. Laderman noted that he has become only the sixth composer to serve as president of the 108-year-old Academy, and described how each of these earlier composers had influenced his career. As a youth, he had been moved by the beauty of music listening to Walter Damrosch's radio program of the 1930s. Douglas Moore, his mentor at Columbia University, encouraged Laderman's concern with prosody and the setting of American texts. Mr. Laderman spent time with the ''remarkable'' Aaron Copland in the 1970s and 1980s when Laderman was at the National Endowment for the Arts. Hugo Weisgall and Laderman ''almost grew up together.'' Weisgall conducted a major work of Laderman's at Queens College. With Ned Rorem, president from 2000-2003, he enjoyed a lively public debate at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the role of the artist in society. Ezra Laderman was born in 1924 and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. He attended Brooklyn College and Columbia University. Mr. Laderman is Professor of Music at the Yale School of Music, where he has been composer-in-residence, and has served as Dean from 1989 to 1995. Among Mr. Laderman's honors are three Guggenheim fellowships, and a Prix de Rome. His compositions have been commissioned by world-renowned orchestras, opera companies, choreographers, ensembles and soloists. Last season, the Colorado Springs Symphony premiered his new cello concerto. Other officers joining the Board of Directors are Richard Howard as secretary and three vice-presidents: Henry N. Cobb in Art, Alison Lurie in Literature, and Joseph Schwantner in Music. |
