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Emma Lou Diemer
was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She began to play and compose
piano music as a young child, and became the organist in her church
at age 13. As an adult, she majored in composition at Yale University
and the Eastman School of Music. She spent a year studying
composition and piano in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and also
studied composition at Tanglewood. After receiving her doctorate from
Eastman, she wrote music for the Arlington, Virginia schools under a
Ford Foundation Young Composer's grant and joined the faculty of the
University of Maryland.
In 1971, Diemer
moved to Santa Barbara, CA, where she was a professor at the
University of California. She was composer-in-residence with the
Santa Barbara Symphony from 1990-92.
The symphony has
performed five of her works including a marimba concerto, a piano
concerto (which won a Kennedy Center Friedheim award), two overtures,
and a recent short work on Chumash Indian themes for the 2004 Young
People's Concerts. Diemer has written for many mediums: solo
instruments, solo voice, chamber, instrumental and choral ensembles,
orchestra, band, and electronics. Her music, much of it commissioned,
has been published since 1957. Some of her piano music has been
recorded, including the piano concerto and chamber music that
includes piano.
Diemer likes to
write music of varying levels of difficulty and no matter whether the
music is easy or difficult, she intends for it to be communicative
and thought provoking, as well as useful. |
