Philip Lasser

Philip Lasser is a Franco-American composer born in New York City. His music has entered the repertoire in all genres with regular performances and broadcasts by such artists as Frank Almond, Zuill Bailey, Steven Blier, Sasha Cooke, Natalie Dessay, Simone Dinnerstein, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, Cho-Liang Lin, Susanna Phillips, Liv Redpath, Jerome Rose, and Brian Zeger. Lasser has received awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Classical Recording Foundation, National Orchestral Association, and Harvard University. He has been composer in residence at the Camargo Foundation and multiple times at Yaddo.

Recent commissions include the Atlanta Symphony and Simone Dinnerstein for his Piano Concerto The Circle and the Child; Juilliard415 for a work to celebrate Bruce Kovner titled A Mask in the Mirror; Ensemble Connect; Gerard Schwarz with the N.Y. Chamber Symphony for his Symphony Vocalise; the El Paso Pro Musica Festival; the 92nd St. Y; and N.Y. Concert Singers. Lasser’s larger works have been performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Boulder (Colo.) Philharmonic. His music is published by Editions Max Eschig, Paris, and Rassel Editions, New York, and can be heard on Decca, Sony, Delos, Innova, Crystal, New World Records, Eroica Records, and RCA/Red Seal labels. His music

Committed to teaching as well as writing, Lasser is director of the EAMA-Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris for composers, conductors, and chamber musicians. He is author of The Spiraling Tapestry, a seminal treatise on contrapuntal analysis (Rassel Editions). An advocate of French music, Lasser is the founder and director of Suite Française, a chamber ensemble dedicated to bringing the French Salon experience to New York.

Lasser received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard, his MA from Columbia University, and his DMA in composition from Juilliard. He studied composition with David Diamond, Narcis Bonet, Jacques-Louis Monod, and Arthur Berger; and piano with Gaby Casadesus and Grant Johannesen.

Lasser has been a member of the Juilliard School faculty since 1994, where he teaches composition classes as well as theory and analysis for both the graduate studies and doctoral programs.