Perera, Ronald

Ronald Perera was born in Boston, Massachusetts on Dec. 25, 1941. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Harvard University, where he studied with Leon Kirchner. In 1967, while on a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship in Music from Harvard, Perera studied electronic music and computer composition with Gottfried Michael Koenig at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He also worked independently with Randall Thompson in choral music and with Mario Davidovsky in electronic music. He taught at Syracuse University (1968-1970) and at Dartmouth College Electronic Music Studio (1970-1971). At Smith College (1971-2002) he taught music theory, composition and electronic music. He held the Elsie Irwin Sweeney Chair in Music, 1983-2002. Perera's compositions include operas, song cycles, chamber, choral and orchestral works and works for instruments or voices with electronic sounds. He is best known for his settings of texts by authors such as Dickinson, Joyce, Grass, Sappho, Cummings, Shakespeare, Francis of Assisi, Melville, Ferlinghetti, Updike and Henry Beston.

From the description of Ronald Perera papers, 1941-[ongoing]. (Smith College). WorldCat record id: 52203989

...