Jeffrey Stadelman

Composer Jeff Stadelman’s (b. 1959) unusual, arresting, exacting musical voice has evolved over 25 years, amounting to a complex musical practice that suggests no obvious counterpart.

Stadelman has seen four CDs containing his compositions appear since 2007, including the solo monographic CD, Pity Paid (Centaur Records). Los Angeles Times critic Josef Woodard called the music “painterly . . . , deftly dispersed in time and glazed with a dry wit” while Jay Batzner, of Sequenza 21, describes it as a “powerful, caged beast, barely contained by its enclosure.”

In a May 2011 interview, the composer has said, “It’s for the listener to decide: I’m not able or willing to say what the music means, or even to identify its features beyond the most straightforward ones.” But he has admitted elsewhere to being in some works obsessed with self-contained reference. He also frequently stresses his desire to make beautiful music “within contexts of adversity; that is, to make [my] music sing against the odds, having to fight its way to, or invent, a new lyricism before your ears.”

Originally from Wisconsin, Stadelman serves as Associate Professor of music composition at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He studied composition as an undergraduate with Stephen Dembski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and then with Donald Martino and others for his Ph.D. at Harvard. His current projects include a new piece for large orchestra, as well as continuation of the extensive Koral series of chamber works.