Eric Sessler

Eric Sessler’s compositions are an accessible and engaging blend of classical music infused with elements drawn from popular music. His novel creative methods utilize the guitar as a conduit for creativity—the result being adapted and manipulated to form music ranging in genre from solo to chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Among the performers and ensembles who have commissioned Sessler are Jason Vieaux, Alan Morrison, the Dover Quartet, the Bonita Boyd and Nicholas Goluses duo, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Sessler’s works have been premiered throughout the U.S. and he has received numerous awards, including the ASCAP Foundation Award, the Charles E. Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Theodore Presser Music Foundation Award, and grants from American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, and the Philadelphia Music Project.

Sessler’s music is recorded on ACA Digital Recording, New Focus Recordings, and Musicaphon Records, and is published by Silver Sun Press, Verlag Neue Musik, and Les Productions d’OZ. His Organ Concerto was recorded on Opus 76—a showcase CD of the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Born in New Jersey, Sessler holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music (BM), the Curtis Institute of Music (Diploma), and Juilliard (MM and DMA). Sessler teaches at Curtis and in the Juilliard Pre-College.