Steven Roy Gerber (September 28, 1948, in Washington, D. C. – May 28, 2015, in New York City) was an American composer of classical music. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1969 at the age of twenty. He then attended Princeton University with a fellowship to study musical composition.

Biography and career

Steven Gerber's works include the contrapuntal Fantasy for Solo Violin, which has been recorded on both the CRI and Naxos labels, and Piano Trio, commissioned by the Hans Kindler Foundation. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, James K. Randall, Earl Kim, and Milton Babbitt. His early works are in a free atonal style. During his years as a graduate student, he wrote serial and non-twelve-tone works, such as the a cappella choral works "Dylan Thomas Settings" and "Illuminations" (Rimbaud), and throughout the remainder of the 1970s most of his works were twelve-tone. Beginning in the early 1980s, he abandoned twelve-tone composition, with rare exceptions, and his music became much more tonal, for example in his Piano Sonata. Since then his music remained largely tonal, sometimes extremely chromatic, sometimes diatonic. His music has been reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. His music has been played in the former Soviet Union perhaps more widely than that of any other American composer. In 2005, the conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy commissioned Gerber to compose an orchestral work. The resulting six-movement suite, Music in Dark Times, was premiered by Ashkenazy with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra on March 25–28, 2009. He died in New York City on May 28, 2015, aged 66.

List of compositions

Orchestral

Chamber

Vocal

Choral

Piano

Other solo

Articles

Recordings

Spirituals for String Orchestra; Clarinet Concerto; Serenade Concertante St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony/Vladimir Lande, conductor Jon Manasse, clarinet; Jose Miguel Cueto, violin; Natalia Malkova, violin Arabesque CD Z6803 Symphony No. 1; Dirge and Awakening; Viola Concerto; Triple Overture Russian Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Sanderling, conductor Lars Anders Tomter, viola The Bekova Sisters: Elvira Bekova, violin Alfia Bekova, cello Eleonora Bekova, piano Chandos CD 9831 Violin Concerto; Cello Concerto; Serenade for String Orchestra National Chamber Orchestra/Piotr Gajewski, conductor Kurt Nikkanen, violin; Carter Brey, cello KOCH International Classics KIC-CD-7501 Fantasy; Three Songs Without Words Curtis Macomber, violin Composers Recordings, Inc. CD 706 Une Saison en Enfer The New Calliope Singers/Peter Schubert, conductor William Parker, baritone; Steven R. Gerber, piano Composers Recordings, Inc. CD 638 Elegy on the Name "Dmitri Shostakovich"; Françoise Renard, viola Suoni e Colori SC 53006 Gershwiniana for three violins; 3 Folksong Transformations; 3 Pieces for two violins; Notturno for piano trio; Elegy on the Name Dmitri Shostakovich for viola; 3 Songs Without Words; Fantasy for violin; Duo for violin and cello; Piano Trio Kurt Nikkanen, violin and viola; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Cyrus Beroukhim, violin; Brinton Averil Smith, cello; Sara Davis Buechner, piano Naxos 8.559618