Shifrin, Seymour

American composer.

From the description of The Seymour Shifrin papers, 1940-1982 (inclusive). (Yale University). WorldCat record id: 122589455

From the description of The Seymour Shifrin papers, 1940-1982 (inclusive). (Yale University). WorldCat record id: 702191305

Seymour Jack Shifrin was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 28, 1926. 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.

Seymour Shifrin died in Boston on September 26, 1979, at the age of 53.

From the guide to the The Seymour Shifrin Papers, 1940-1982 (inclusive), (Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University)