Sheila Silver

Sheila Jane Silver (born October 3, 1946) is an American composer. Early life and studies Sheila Silver was born in Seattle, Washington in 1946, the youngest daughter of Robert and Fannie Silver. She started piano studies at the age of five. After two years at the University of Washington, she transferred to the University of California where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1968. She then studied with Erhard Karkoschka at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and with György Ligeti in Berlin and later in Hamburg. She attended the 1970 Darmstadt Summer Institute, and spent a summer at the Tanglewood Music Center (1972) where she studied with Jacob Druckman. At Brandeis University she studied with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero, earning her PhD in 1976. Silver is Professor Emerita at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and served as visiting professor at the College of William and Mary. Career Silver has merged tonal and atonal elements in works starting with her 1979 Canto, A Setting of Ezra Pound’s Canto XXXIX, for baritone and chamber ensemble (commissioned by the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood). Richard Dyer wrote in the Boston Globe