Judith Lang Zaimont (b.
1945) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, into a musical family. She grew up in New York City, began piano studies at the age of five, and at age eleven was accepted into
the preparatory division of The Juilliard School. There, as she has since
recalled, she first realized that she was "born to be a composer."
During her teen years she won several composition competitions, including that
of the National Federation of Music Clubs; and at age 18 she was awarded the
BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) Young Composer Award.
Zaimont studied piano at
Juilliard with Leland Thompson (1958-64), and composition at Queens College with Hugo Weisgall and at Columbia University with Otto Luening and Jack Beeson.
After receiving her master's degree, she went to Paris to study orchestration
with Andr Jolivet on a Debussy Fellowship from the Alliance Franaise.
Zaimont's earlier works written
for the most part prior to 1980 are mainly vocal or for solo piano. In
addition to the works recorded here, her Judaically related pieces from that
period also include
Man's Image and His Cry (1968), for contralto and
baritone soloists, chorus, and orchestra. General vocal works from that time
frame include choral and solo settings of poems by Shakespeare, Shelley,
Herrick, Gay, Auden, Cummings, Byron, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Blake, and
others. Her piano works from those years include a concerto (1972) and numerous
solo pieces, such as
A Calendar Set (1972-78);
Two Rags (1974);
the nocturne
La Fin de siecle (1978); and the four-hand
Snazzy Sonata
(1972).
More recent works in
Zaimont's oeuvre of nearly 100 compositions many of which have been awarded
important prizes and have received performances abroad as well as in the United
States include three symphonies; a chamber opera for children,
Goldilocks
and the Three Bears; and oratorios and cantatas. She has also written a
number of works on American Indian themes, such as
The Magic World (Ritual
Music for Three), as well as music for wind ensembles, vocal chamber pieces
for various combinations, instrumental chamber works, and solo music for string
and wind instruments, piano, organ, and voice.
Zaimont's many composition
awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983-84); a Maryland State Arts Council
creative fellowship (1986-87); and commission grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts (1982), the American Composers Forum (1993), and the
international 1995 McCollin Competition for Composers for her first symphony,
which was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1996. She was
"composer of the year" at Alabama University in 1994, the featured
composer at the Society of Composers International American meeting in 1995,
artist-in-residence for the 1996-97 academic year at Skidmore College,
composer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin (River Falls) in 1999, the
honored composer in 2001 at the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition where the gold medalists performed her music and the featured
composer in 2002 at the annual conference of the National Federation of Music
Clubs.
A distinguished teacher who
has served on the faculty of Queens College, the Peabody Conservatory, and Adelphi University, Zaimont was a professor of composition from 1992 until 2005 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She is also the founder and co-director of the
performing ensemble American Accent, based in New York, and the creator and
editor in chief of the acclaimed series of books
The Musical Woman: An
International Perspective. Her music has been the subject of twelve
doctoral dissertations.
Zaimont's works have been
performed by the Baltimore, Jacksonville, Greenville (South Carolina), and
Harrisburg symphony orchestras; the Czech Radio Orchestra; the Berlin Radio
Orchestra; the Kharkov Philharmonic (Ukraine); and the Pro Arte Chamber
Orchestras in New York and Boston.
