Ramon Zupko

RAMON ZUPKO (b. 1932, Pittsburgh) started learning the piano from his mother, a good pop pianist, at the age of 8, and started to compose at about the same time. His talent for composition was encouraged in high school, in Ohio, and he went on to study with Vincent Persichetti (at the Juilliard School) and later in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship and at Columbia University. He lived in Europe from 1962 to 1966, studying at the Darmstadt Summer Courses and taking courses in electronic music at Bilthoven, Holland. Back in the U.S.A., he lived for a year on a Ford Foundation grant and then became Director of the Electronic Music Laboratory at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Since 1971 hehas held a similar position at Western Michigan University, where he also teaches composition and theory and directs the New Music Ensemble. In 1970 his work for soprano and chamber ensemble, La Guerre was chosen to represent the U.S. at the festival of the ISCM in Basel, Switzerland.