Robert Sirota (born October 13, 1949) is an American classical music composer based in New York City and Searsmont, Maine. Sirota has written solo instrumental, vocal, chamber, orchestral, operatic, and liturgical works. He is the father of American violists Nadia Sirota and Jonah Sirota, and husband to organist and Episcopal priest Victoria Sirota. Dating back to 1994, Robert Sirota's work can be found on nine studio albums recorded by an assortment of musicians including: Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, the Chiara String Quartet, and the American String Quartet. Most recently, Sirota's 2020 work for cello and piano, Family Portraits, was recorded by the Fischer Duo for their album 2020 Visions, released on Navona Records on August 26, 2022.
Education and Career
Born in New York, Sirota received his earliest compositional training at The Juilliard School. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in piano and composition from Oberlin Conservatory, studying with Joseph Wood and Richard Hoffman. Sirota received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which allowed him to study abroad in Paris, where his principal teacher was Nadia Boulanger. Sirota went on to study with Earl Kim and Leon Kirchner, earning his Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University.
During his career he has chaired the music department at New York University and served as Director of Boston University's School of Music. In 1995, he became Director of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. In 2005 he became President of Manhattan School of Music, where he was also a composition professor. He served as president there until 2012.
Sirota has held residencies and seminars at institutions in the United States and abroad, including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of Missouri–Kansas City, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Samford University, Miami Dade College's New World School of the Arts, Peabody Institute, and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore. In New York City he developed the Bridging the Gap concert series at National Sawdust.
In 2019 and 2020 a series called Sirota @ 70 marked his 70th birthday with performances of Sirota's compositions. These included commissions for the event such as Job Fragments, written for baritone Thomas Pellaton; Dancing With the Angels which featured flutist Carol Wincenc; and Blackird Singing, which had its world premiere performance by flutist Linda Chesis at the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival. Some performances scheduled for this period were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and rescheduled, such as the Telegraph Quartet's premiere of his new composition Contrapassos.
Grants and Publishing
Grants to Sirota have come from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, United States Information Agency, Watson Foundation, American Music Center, and Meet The Composer. The publishers of his music have included Theodore Presser, Schott, Music Associates of New York, MorningStar, To the Fore, and Muzzy Ridge Music, the Sirotas' own publishing enterprise named for Muzzy Ridge in Searsmont, Maine, where Sirota spends part of the year.
Muzzy Ridge Concert Series
Since 2021 Sirota has presented a performance series called Muzzy Ridge Concerts at a large studio space he added to his Searsmont home. The concerts have featured musicians including flutist Carol Wincenc and cellist Velléda Miragias of Duo Coquelicot, violinist Laurie Carney, pianist David Friend, pianist and composer Nico Muhly, and oboist Regina Brady, as well as Sirota's son, violist Jonah Sirota, his daughter, violist Nadia Sirota, and his wife, organist and pianist Victoria Sirota.
Commissions
Wave Upon Wave for the Naumburg Foundation (2017) Immigrant Songs for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (2018) Luminous Bodies performed by Jeffrey Kahane and yMusic at the Sarasota Music Festival (2018) Hafez Songs for Palladium Musicum (2018) O Blessed Holy Trinity for choir and organ, for Trinity Episcopal Church, Indianapolis Cello Sonata No. 2 for Benjamin Larsen and Hyungjin Choi (2019) In the Fullness of Time, Mass for chorus, organ and percussion, Apparitions for organ and string quartet, for the American Guild of Organists (1999) American String Quartet Alarm Will Sound Paul Simon (arrangements for Simon and sextet yMusic)
Compositions and Projects
Sirota has composed over 100 works. The most significant include: