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Dr. Eliane Aberdam, composition
Eliane Aberdam completed her BM in composition in 1988 at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem where she studied with Mark Kopytman. In 1989, she entered the graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied with George Crumb and obtained her MM in Composition in 1992. She completed her Ph.D. in Composition at U.C. Berkeley in 1998.
In 1998-1999, she taught composition, theory and Music technology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her works have been performed in Europe, Israel, and the United States. She attended music festivals such as The Bartok Seminar in Hungary, June in Buffalo, the Académie d'Été in Paris, and Voix Nouvelles in Royaumont (France). In 1995, she was selected by IRCAM for the Annual Course in electronic music, and for the commission of "PaRDeS", an electro-acoustic work for chamber ensemble and electronics. In 2000, the Ensemble InterContemporain (Paris) commissioned and premiered the chamber orchestra piece "Quoi? Ce point." In 2007, Ketty Nez commissioned Tête à Tête for the Wolfe/Nez Duo. Her Grisailles Vaporeuses piano trio was performed by Trio Casals at Carnegie Hall in February 2020 and by the Kingston Chamber Music Festival (2018) among others.
Aberdam has composed three operatic works: Tamar and Shahrazad are about domestic violence, and In Our Own Words is about inter-racial adoption. Aberdam is inspired by topics such as climate change, social, political, and racial injustices. She recently completed a chorus piece Door about the plight of refugees (based on texts written by refugees/asylum seekers).
Her concerto Otohime for double bass and orchestra won second place in the Donne in Musica composition contest in 2017, and was premiered in Chisinau, Moldova (2019). Her violin concerto In Memoriam for the fallen fighters in Ukraine was premiered in Kyiv in June 2023. Her guitar solo piece, Purushartha, was released on Modern Classical X in February 2025. Aberdam is currently completing her fourth opera Frontiers of Sand and Sea about the predicament of migrants and refugees. She has been teaching composition and theory at the University of Rhode Island since 2001.