Eric Chasalow

Eric Chasalow (1955, USA) is a composer, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, teacher, and advisor to non-profits. Best known for works combining instruments with electronic sound, he has also collaborated with musicians and artists across a wide range of projects.

His first portrait album, Over The Edge, appeared on New World Records in 1993. After the 2003 release of Left to His Own Devices, ARRAY, the journal of the International Computer Music Association, wrote that his music "clearly establishes him as one of the leaders of our times...offer(ing) a wondrous fusion between distinct styles and mediums...". Two further portrait albums followed on Suspicious Motives Records in 2014 and 2015, and a library edition of compositions for solo instrument and tape was published that same year in celebration of his 60th birthday. Music journalist Tim Page, reviewing Ghosts of Our Former Selves — ten genre-bending songs released in the fall of 2020 — wrote, "Often shimmeringly beautiful… this is music to sustain and challenge us at a time when we need it most…". His most recent album, …arching, reaching, breathless: music for strings, was released in April 2026.

Chasalow has been commissioned by and written for Guido Arbonelli, Tony Arnold, Lucia Bova, Tim Brady, Miranda Cuckson, Vicki Ray, Fred Sherry and Bruno Schneider, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Boston Musica Viva, Collage, DaCapo Chamber Players, Dinosaur Annex, The EAR Unit, the Lydian String Quartet, Musicatreize, New York New Music Ensemble, Network for New Music, Nuova Consonanza, Portland Chamber Music Festival, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Sound Icon, Talea Ensemble and many others. His Dream Songs — a setting of John Berryman texts for orchestra and fixed media (alternative version with live tenor) — premiered at the 2001 Boston CyberArts Festival, performed by BMOP at Boston Symphony Hall, and was released by New World Records. A one-hour opera, The Puzzle Master — his 2007 adaptation of an unpublished text shared with him by poet F.D. Reeve, with video projections by Denise Marika — premiered with two performances at the Laurie Theater at Brandeis, then toured Iowa universities for five nights. In recent years, he has composed several song cycles that explore family history, including the Collage/Tony Arnold commission, Three Tastes of Home and the forty-minute 2022 Koussevitsky Foundation commission, Muriel’s Songs — an adaptation of his grandmother’s stories about her life growing up Jewish in Brooklyn across the span of twentieth century. Both works were recently recorded and will appear on an album expected in 2027.

In addition to works combining live instruments with electronics, Chasalow has composed numerous purely electroacoustic works which have been programmed repeatedly over several decades at festivals world-wide, including those of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA) and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the US (SEAMUS), some of which appear on CDs from those organizations. Crossing Boundaries, a layered and enigmatic work commissioned by Bates College in 2000, was recently remixed in low-order Ambisonics during a guest appearance at the Eastman School of Music..

In 1996, with his wife, Barbara Cassidy, Chasalow co-curated and produced The Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music, an oral history documenting pioneer electronic music composers and engineers from 1950 to the present. Over sixty hours of recordings include interviews with Bebe Baron, Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, Pauline Oliveros, Max Matthews, Morton Subotnick and many others. Excerpts have appeared in several documentaries, including OHM+: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music (DVD/CD special edition, 2000), tech stuff on QOOB/MTV Italy (2008), and Sisters with Transistors (2020). The Archive was donated to the Library of Congress in 2025, where it will be made widely accessible to scholars.

Just two years before the collection began, Chasalow had started composing electroacoustic portraits based on composers' recorded autobiographies — a way of processing and understanding that material through music. The first, Left to His Own Devices, honored Milton Babbitt's 80th birthday. The series continued with tributes to John Lennon (Portrait of the Artist), Mario Davidovsky (Into Your Ears), Jimi Hendrix ('Scuse Me) and Stefan Wolpe (Wolpe Variations, commissioned by the Stefan Wolpe Society for Wolpe's centennial year). His article "Composing From Memory," published in the journal Organised Sound, explores approaches to composing from archival materials.

Since 1981 Chasalow has been associated with The Composers Conference — the over eighty-year-old organization that supports composers in the early stages of their careers. A three-time guest composer/mentor, he is also a long-time active member of the board and served as president from 2012 to 2016. During that time, he conceived and established the Contemporary Performance Institute, adding advanced conservatory students to the Conference's community of established professional performers, emerging composers, and serious amateur chamber musicians.

Eric Chasalow is the Irving G. Fine Professor of Music Emeritus, following a thirty-six-year career at Brandeis University as teacher, mentor, and administrator (1990–2026). On his arrival, he was charged with rejuvenating the Brandeis Electronic Music Studio — founded in 1961 but largely dormant since director Alvin Lucier's departure in 1970. He rebuilt the studio (the first of several rebuilds during his tenure) and renamed it the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS). As studio director, he established a curriculum in electroacoustic music, taught undergraduate and graduate courses, advised student projects, and produced concerts, including BEAMS Marathon Concerts with an international roster of musicians in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2011, as part of the Boston CyberArts Festival. The 2011 Marathon won the Festival's IBM Innovation Award. Chasalow also served twice as Music Department Chair (1996–2002 and 2023–2024) and two terms as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (2014–2021).

Prior to arriving at Brandeis, Chasalow held arts administration positions in New York City. While still a graduate student, he worked in grant-writing and concert production for The Group for Contemporary Music. Later, he co-founded the composers' collective Sonic Union (later known as Sonus) and served as executive director of the Guild of Composers concert series. From 1988-90 he was executive director of the Association for Classical Music, devising music education programs in partnership with the New York City public schools.

Among the last generation mentored by the founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Chasalow earned the MA and DMA at Columbia University. His principal composition teacher was Mario Davidovsky; he also studied flute with Harvey Sollberger and theory with Allan Forte and George Perle. As a master's student, he studied with George Edwards and Jack Beeson. Chasalow completed his undergraduate degree at Bates College, where he studied composition with Elliott Schwartz of Bowdoin College. During his junior year at the New England Conservatory, he studied composition with William Thomas McKinley and alto saxophone with Joe Allard and Carl Atkins. Growing up in New Jersey, he studied jazz guitar with Ed Berg, which led him to compose roughly a dozen big band charts and earn an outstanding musician award at the 1972 Ramapo Stage Band Festival.

His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Composers Fellowship in 1983, which led to three works for soloist with tape composed in the analog studios at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1986, he simultaneously received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a New York Foundation for the Arts commission. He has since received prizes and commissions from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (1993 and 2004), the Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003), the Koussevitzky Music Foundation (2005 and 2022), and commissions from both Chamber Music America and the Barlow Foundation in 2010.

He has been honored with residencies at MacDowell (seven), Bogliasco Center, Copland House (two), BAU at Camargo, and The Studios at Key West.

His music is available through Suspicious Motives Music, G. Schirmer, McGinnis & Marx (now in the catalog of Peters), and Edition Bim (Switzerland), and on CDs from New World Records, Neuma, ICMC, Intersound Net Records, SEAMUS, Suspicious Motives Records, New Focus Recordings, and RRRecords.

The Eric Chasalow collection in the Library of Congress was established in 2009. For inquiries and to purchase scores, contact Black Tea Music (blackteamusic.com). Additional information may be found at www.ericchasalow.com.