Grammy-winning composer Robert Livingston Aldridge (born:1954, Richmond,VA) has written over
eighty works for orchestra, opera, music-theater, voice, dance, string quartet, solo and chamber
ensembles. His music has been performed throughout the world. He has received numerous fellowships
and awards for his music from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Massachusetts Artist’s Foundation, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Meet the Composer,
The American Symphony Orchestra League, the New Jersey Council on the Arts and the Dodge
Foundation.

Robert Aldridge’s opera, Elmer Gantry, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis, with a libretto by
Herschel Garfein, was given its fully-staged world premiere by Nashville Opera in November, 2007, and
received unanimous praise from the New York Times (‘Behold! An Operatic Miracle’), The Wall St.
Journal and Opera News. Excerpts from Elmer Gantry were performed by New York City Opera on
their 2007 VOX Festival. He was commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Los Angeles
Chamber Orchestra to compose a clarinet concerto for David Singer, which was premiered in April and
May, 2005, and was released on compact disc by Naxos International in 2010. It was hailed as ‘a brilliant
new concerto’ by Gramophone Magazine. His tone poem, Leda and the Swan, a commission from
the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, The Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and the Louisiana
Philharmonic Orchestra, was premiered in January, 2003 at the New Jersey Performing Center for the
Arts. His forty-five minute symphonic oratorio, Parables (written with librettist Herschel Garfein)
was commissioned and premiered by the Topeka Symphony for their 2010 season finale. Other 2010
season highlights include both professional and university performances of Elmer Gantry in
Milwaukee, Houston and Minnesota. A CD recording of Elmer Gantry (Florentine Opera/
Milwaukee Symphony) was released by Naxos International in 2011 and was ranked the #1 CD of the
year by Opera News Magazine. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to write an
Elmer Gantry Suite for orchestra, which was given its world premiere at the opening gala for their
2010-2011 season. His music has recently been conducted by Keith Lockhart, Jacques Lacombe and
performed by Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich. Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein received a 2012
Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, only the third opera ever to receive this
distinction. In addition, the Naxos CD of Elmer Gantry received a Grammy for Best Engineered
Classical Album of 2012.

Robert Livingston Aldridge has been Composer-in-Residence at the Brevard Music Festival since 2006.
He has been a Meet the Composer/Music Alive Composer in Residence, and was 2010 Composer in
Residence at CU NOW in Boulder, Colorado. In April, 2012, he will be a composer-in-residence at the
University of Minnesota. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony on five occasions since 1987.
In 1989, he was chosen to represent the New York Foundation for the Arts in a solo concert of his music
at Lincoln Center. He was a founder of the Composers in Red Sneakers, a composer consortium which
achieved international recognition in 1980’s. In 1991 he received a National Endowment Recording
Grant for a compact-disc of his chamber music for saxophone. His compositions are exclusively
published by Edition Peters (CF Peters Corporation).

Robert Livingston Aldridge received a Doctorate in Composition from the Yale School of Music, a Master’s Degree in Composition from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Currently, he is a Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the John J. Cali School at Montclair State University. He was Founding Director of the John J. Cali School from 2006-2009, and Chair of the Music Department from 2005-2011. Most recently, he has been appointed Director/Chair of the Music Department at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University (July, 2012).