Robert Beaser was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1954. He studied literature, political philosophy and music at Yale College, graduating summa cum laude, and earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music in 1986. His composition teachers have included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Toru Takemitsu, Arnold Franchetti and Goffredo Petrassi. In addition, he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller and William Steinberg, and composition with Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood. From 1978- 1990 he was co-Music Director and Conductor of the contemporary chamber ensemble Musical Elements, bringing premieres of over two hundred works to New York City. He is presently in his fourth season as Meet the Composer/Composer in Residence with the American Composers Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall.
In recent years, Beaser has emerged as a major voice in a new generation of American composers. Since 1982, when the New York Times wrote that he possessed a "lyrical gift comparable to that of the late Samuel Barber," his music has won praise for its balance between melodic sweep and architectural clarity. He is often cited as an important figure among the 'New Tonalists' - composers who are adopting new tonal grammar to their own uses - and through a wide range of media has firmly established his own language as a synthesis of European tradition and American vernacular. Beaser's compositions have earned him numerous awards and honors. In 1977, he became the youngest American Composer to win the Prix de Rome from the American Academy in Rome. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Charles Ives Scholarship, a Nonesuch Commission Award and honors in the Stroud International Competition in England.
Beaser's music has been performed and commissioned with regularity both in America and abroad. Orchestral works have been played by the New York Philharmonic, the Saint Louis Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Crakow Philharmonic, the Rome Radio Symphony (RAI-Italiana) and most recently, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in a work commissioned for their centennial season at Orchestra Hall. Other recent performances have occurred at the Aspen, Ojai, Berlin, Musica di Asolo, and Lockinhaus Festivals, the Meet the Moderns Series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New World Symphony and Seattle Symphony chamber series, the Chamber Music Societies of Lincoln Center, Baltimore and Chicago, the Twentieth Century Consort, Solisti New York, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. His music has also been performed and commissioned by artists such as Leonard Slatkin, Paula Robison, Richard Stoltzman, Eliot Fisk, Pamela Mia Paul, Gilbert Levine, Paul Sperry, James Galway, Paul Dunkel, Ransom Wilson, Kenneth Jean, Richard Dufallo, Manuel Barrueco, David Zinman, Gerard Schwarz and Dennis Russell Davies. Currently, he is working on a number of commissions, including those from the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony.
In 1986, Beaser's widely heard Mountain Songs was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Contemporary Composition. His works have been recorded for EMI-Electrola, Musicmasters, Albany and New World Records. An upcoming disc on the London/Argo label will feature his Piano Concerto, The Seven Deadly Sins, and a new residency commission with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composers Orchestra. In addition to his activities as composer and conductor, Beaser has been guest lecturer at a number of universities and conservatories including Oberlin and Juilliard, and is co-issue editor of the "New Tonality" issue of the international music journal The Contemporary Music Review.