Chester Biscardi (b.1948)

Chester Biscardi’s music has been performed throughout Asia, Europe, and North and South America. It has been featured at the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Gaudeamus Festival in Rotterdam, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England, Moscow Autumn, Music Today-Japan in Tokyo, the Thailand Composition Festival in Bangkok, the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the North American New Music Festival in Buffalo, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, Piccolo Spoleto, the Staunton Music Festival, the International Guitar Festival of Morelia, and the Bienal of São Paulo, Brazil. Performances of his music have also been sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra, the BBC, London, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Cygnus Ensemble, Ensemble TIMF of Korea, the Gothia Percussion Ensemble of Sweden, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Houston Symphony, the National Flute Association, the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma della RAI, the Orchestra of St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Sequitur, and UNESCO/International Music Council.

Biscardi’s catalog includes At the Still Point, for orchestra, Piano Concerto, for piano and orchestra, Recognition, for piano and violin with string orchestra, Tight-Rope, a chamber opera in nine uninterrupted scenes, Trasumanar, for twelve percussionists and piano, and numerous works for solo piano, voice and piano, small and large chamber ensembles, and chorus, as well as incidental music for theater, dance, and television. His work is published by C.F. Peters Company/Edition Peters, Merion Music, Inc. of Theodore Presser Company, and Biscardi Music Press, and is distributed by Classical Vocal Reprints and Theodore Front Musical Literature, Inc. Recordings appear on the Albany, American Modern Recordings, Bridge, CRI (New World Records), Intim Musik (Sweden), Naxos, New Albion, New Ariel, North/South Recordings, and Sept Jardins (Canada) labels. He is a Yamaha Artist.

Biscardi is a recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Academy Award in Music and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Aaron Copland Award, fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio), as well as grants from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Born in l948 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he received a B.A. in English Literature, an M.A. in Italian Literature, and an M.M. in Musical Composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.M.A. and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale. He is Director of the Music Program at Sarah Lawrence College, where he was the first recipient of the William Schuman Chair in Music.