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Tamar Diesendruck

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Tamar Diesendruck
Born (1946-08-03) August 3, 1946 (age 78)
Tel Aviv, Israel
Alma materBrandeis University
OccupationComposer
EmployerBerklee College of Music
PartnerEric Moe
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1999)
Musical career
GenresClassical music

Tamar Diesendruck (born August 3, 1946) is an American composer of classical music. A 1999 Guggenheim Fellow, she is also a professor at Berklee College of Music.

Biography

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Tamar Diesendruck was born in August 3, 1946 in Tel Aviv,[1] and she later emigrated to the United States, where she grew up in New England.[2] In 1968, she obtained her BA at Brandeis University,[1] where she studied under Martin Boykan, Edward Cohen, and Seymour Shifrin.[2] After obtaining her MA at University of California, Berkeley in 1979,[1] she then remained there to get her PhD in Music Theory and Composition in 1983,[3] with her advisor being Andrew Imbrie.[4]

In 1989, Diesendruck's piece Such Stuff premiered at Carnegie Hall; Carmen Eisner of the Wisconsin State Journal praised it for "hold[ing] plenty of close calls for ears that don't like to take chances",[5] while John Rockwell of The New York Times criticized it for its perceived incoherence.[6] In 1990, she started her series of Tower of Babel-inspired pieces, with Susan Larson of The Boston Globe calling it "the framework for Diesendruck's search for a personal language".[7] One of these pieces, On That Day, when performed by the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble in 1991, was called "determinedly un-mysterious" by Richard Buell of The Boston Globe,[8] Robert Croan of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called How/Feel the "most substantial and interesting work" of its respective 1993 Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble concert.[9] In 1997, Buell praised her next piece The Grief That Does Not Speak (in lower-case) for its quality but criticized it for "swallowing" several subsequent pieces.[10]

In 2007, she composed Sudoku Variations specifically for Elaine Chew; inspired from a sudoku hobby she recently undertook, its meter structure is inspired by the game's mathematical rules.[11][12] She was a 2012-2013 Radcliffe Fellow.[13] She released two albums from Centaur Records: Quartets 1+2,[14] Theater of the Ear (2008) and The Grief That Does Not Speak (2011).[15][16] David Patrick Stearns told The Philadelphia Inquirer that her piece Other Floods, performed at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral in 2013, had "leapt down curious musical rabbit holes [he] was unable to follow".[17]

She was a 1984 Fellow of the American Academy in Rome[18] and a 1986 Charles Ives Scholar.[19] She has been awarded the MacDowell Fellowship twelve times, in 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2023.[20] She also won a Library of Congress/Koussevitzky Music Foundation composition grant in 1988.[21] In 1999, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition,[22][1] as well as a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship.[19] She won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 2006.[19]

After teaching in several schools such as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco State University (where she worked as a lecturer in 1988[21]), New York University, University of Pittsburgh, and Chatham College,[1] she eventually joined the faculty of Berklee College of Music and became professor there.[3] At Berklee, she teaches classes in composition.[3]

As of 1999, she worked as a composer in Somerville, Massachusetts.[1] Her partner Eric Moe is a composer.[23]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Reports of the President and the Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1999. p. 73.
  2. ^ a b Sheridan, Molly (April 18, 2002). "Koussevitzky Foundations Commission Ten". New Music USA. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  3. ^ a b c "Tamar Diesendruck". Berklee College of Music. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  4. ^ "Earlier Ph.D. Dissertations | Music". music.berkeley.edu. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  5. ^ Eisner, Carmen (April 17, 1989). "Diesendruck's string quartet challenges Pro Arte audience". Wisconsin State Journal. p. 2C – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ Rockwell, John (May 7, 1989). "Reviews/Music; Pro Arte Quartet's Mixed Bill". New York Times. p. A73 – via ProQuest.
  7. ^ Larson, Susan (May 2, 1999). "Diesendruck's 'Ear' has East Coast performance". Boston Globe. p. C16 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Buell, Richard (October 22, 1991). "The sound of a season revving up". Boston Globe. p. 71 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ Croan, Robert (November 2, 1993). "New Music Ensemble gives a show easy to appreciate". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. D3 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Buell, Richard (March 25, 1997). "For cellist Diaz it's Judith Gordon to the rescue". Boston Globe. p. E4 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Brown, August (January 24, 2007). "Her solution to Sudoku? Music". Los Angeles Times. p. E28 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ Hardesty, Larry (August 19, 2008). "The Geometry of Sound". MIT Technology Review – via ProQuest.
  13. ^ "Tamar Diesendruck". Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  14. ^ Gimbel, Allen (1999). "Diesendruck: Quartets 1+2". American Record Guide. Vol. 62, no. 5 – via ProQuest.
  15. ^ "Diesendruck: Theater of the Ear". Presto Music. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  16. ^ "T. Diesendruck: The Grief That Does Not Speak". Presto Music. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  17. ^ Stearns, David Patrick (June 18, 2013). "The Crossing opens its festival with a Baltic stunner". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. C2 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ "All Fellows". American Academy in Rome. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  19. ^ a b c "All Awards". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  20. ^ "Tamar Diesendruck - MacDowell Fellow in Music Composition". MacDowell. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  21. ^ a b "10 composers receive music commissions". Corpus Christi Caller-Times. New York Times News Service. January 9, 1988. p. 2. Retrieved February 18, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ^ "Tamar Diesendruck". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved February 18, 2025.
  23. ^ "Pro Arte tries something new". Wisconsin State Journal. April 8, 1989. p. 1C – via Newspapers.com.
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