Edward Smaldone

Dr. Edward Smaldone (b. 1956) is Professor of Music and Associate Director at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, City University of New York. He was the Director of the School of Music from 2002 – 2016. His composition teachers include George Perle, Ralph Shapey, Henry Weinberg and Hugo Weisgall. Smaldone is the recipient of awards such as the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as grants and awards from ASCAP, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo Corporation, the Charles Ives Center for the Arts, the Percussive Arts Society and the American Music Center. In 2016 he was named “Composer of the Year” by the Classical Recording Foundation at a ceremony at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in 2017 he was named a “Distinguished Alumnus” of the CUNY Graduate Center.

Smaldone's music has been performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Denver Chamber Orchestra, The Memphis Symphony, the Queens Symphony Orchestra, Oratorio Sinfonica Japan, Oberlin New Music Ensemble, the League/ISCM Chamber Players, the Peabody Camerata, the EOS Orchestra of Beijing, China, the Chicago Composers Orchestra, The New York Virtuoso Singers, the Brno Philharmonic, the Stony Brook “Premieres!” Ensemble, Royal Danish Academy of Music Winds and many other soloists and ensembles in the United States, Canada, China and Europe. An active composer for the dance, Smaldone arranged music by and attributed to Pergolesi which has been performed worldwide by Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project . Other collaborations have been with the Hartford Ballet and the dancer-choreographer Yin Mei. His music is recorded on the CRI, New World, Capstone, Ablaze and Naxos labels. His latest CDs include “Rituals: Sacred and Profane” a collection of six chamber works, and “L’infinito” recorded by the New York Virtuoso Singers, both released on Naxos records. His recent composition "The Beauty of Innuendo" was performed by orchestras in Japan, Chicago, New York, the Czech Republic and China. He recently completed a new CD of chamber works with performances by Charles Neidich, Tony Arnold, Daniel Phillips, Marcy Rosen, Tara Helen O’Connor, June Han, Susan Narucki, Donald Pirone, Judith Mendenhall and Morey Ritt.