Works performed by Earplay:

The Modern Temper
The Nick of Time

Seymour Shifrin (1926-1959) was born in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from the New York High School of Music and Art, he studied privately with the composer William Schuman, and then attended Columbia University, where he received the BA and the MA in 1947 and 1949, respectively. His principal composition teacher at Columbia was Otto Luening. Shifrin taught at Columbia in 1949-1950 and at the City College of New York in 1950-51. The next year, he studied in Paris with Darius Milhaud. In 1952 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained until 1966, when he became a professor at Brandeis University. Shifrin’s works have been performed by many prominent ensembles and soloists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard, Fine Arts, and Galimir Quartets, and Alfred Brendel, Stephen Bishop, Bethany Beardslee, and Jan de Gaetani. He received numerous honors, including the Boston Symphony’s Horblit Award, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Koussevitzky, Guggenheim, and Fulbright foundations.

[from program for February 8, 2010 concert]

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