The award-winning American composer Sheila Silver studied at Berkeley, with Erhard Karkoschka in Stuttgart, and with György Ligeti in Berlin and Hamburg. She completed her doctorate at Brandeis University and is professor of music at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Orchestral and Instrumental Music
Silver’s Piano Concerto is united by its opening motif, which suggests a young man marching off to meet his fate; it is followed by a movement of greater intimacy and questioning. The Concerto ends in a dance with a melody in the tradition of the Hasidic nigun. A period spent in France at the fishing village of Cassis inspired her six Préludes for piano, based on poems by Baudelaire.