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J O E L E R I C S U B E N studied composition with Seymour Shifrin, Samuel Adler,
Martin Boykan, and Robert Gauldin, and conducting with Jacques-Louis Monod, Witold
Rowicki, Otmar Suitner, and Sergiu Celibidache. Suben holds degrees from the Eastman
School of Music, Brandeis University (Ph.D.), Hochschule “Mozarteum” (Salzburg), and
the Conservatory of the City of Vienna.
At age 21 Suben’s Make a Joyful Noise for tenor voice and organ won first prize
(including publication by H.W. Gray) in a nationwide competition of the American Guild
of Organists. In the same year, his setting of Psalm 133 won the Eastman Sacred Song
Competition. More recently, his Sonatina for piano won the 1981 Music Teachers
National Association Composer of the Year Award, and his Idyls for 2 pianos was
chosen from among 350 works as the winning entry in the 1986 Washington Square
contemporary Music Series Competition. Suben’s The Birth of Euphrosyne was the
subject of a feature article in a inaugural issue of Chamber Music Magazine. In 1987 his
Academic Overture won the Bucks County (PA) Symphony composition prize.
Major commissions have come from the Guild of Composers, guitarist William
Anderson, The Roxbury (NY) Chamber Players, Ogniwo Chorus (Poland), and
Congregation Beth Ahaba (Richmond, VA). Suben’s works have had first performances
by the Richmond Symphony, the Lydian String Quartet, the San Francisco Girls Chorus,
and the Moldovan National Symphony Orchestra (Kishinev). His Song Book for treble
chorus was broadcast in autumn 1994 on National Public Radio. Suben’s music for a
Granta Magazine television commercial was aired on PBS in September-October 1994.
His Fantasy-Variations for Violin & Orchestra was recorded September 2000 by New
York Philharmonic violinist Vladimir Tsypin and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Among the publishers of Suben’s 75 original compositions and arrangements are
a number of well-known firms: Belwin-Mills, Boosey & Hawkes, Bourne, E.F. Kalmus,
and Lawson-Gould. From 1986–2004 he served on the Admissions Committee of the
American Composers Alliance, from 1999–2009 as a member of their Board of
Governors, and since 2011 as Vice President and advisor to the Board. Suben has had
residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Charles Ives Center, and the Virginia Center.
As a Fulbright Fellow in Poland (1977-79) Suben organized and conducted
orchestral and choral programs of contemporary American music in conservatories and
major concert halls. While mastering a large portion of the standard symphonic, operatic,
and choral repertoire, Suben has energetically championed the works of contemporary
American and European composers, having performed/recorded some 550 works.
A frequent guest conductor of major Central European orchestras, Suben records
more than ten hours of symphonic music and opera each season. Since 1998 he has led,
at the invitation of the Polish Radio, archival recordings of symphonic works by Polish
and American composers, among them Jerzy Fitelberg and Karol Rathaus. In that year he
made his conducting debut with the Warsaw National Philharmonic at the Warsaw
Autumn Festival. His work is represented on some forty commercial releases by New
World, CRI, Naxos/Marco Polo, Centaur, Parnassus, Leonarda, Opus One, Capstone, and
Soundspells International labels and includes recordings of orchestral works by Pulitzer
Prize composers Roger Sessions and Leslie Bassett.
[Nov. 2011—518 words]