Ezra Laderman
American composer Ezra Laderman was born in Brooklyn on 29 June 1924. His parents had emigrated from Poland. At the age of four, he was improvising at the piano, and at seven was composing written music. He studied at New York's High School of Music and Art.
Whilst serving in the US Army during World War II he wrote his Leipzig Symphony. After the war, he studied with Stefan Wolpe and Miriam Gideon, then with Otto Luening.
He produced nearly a hundred compositions, including many concertos, symphonies, string quartets and some large-scale choral works. He was commissioned by many American orchestras.
From 2006 until 2009 he was president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Until June 2014 he also taught composition at Yale.
Laderman died on 28 February 2015, aged ninety.