Steven Gellman

Steven Gellman (born 16 September 1947) is a Canadian composer and pianist. He has been commissioned to write works for the Besançon International Music Festival, the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, McGill University, Musica Camerata, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, Opera Lyra, the Pierrot Ensemble, the Stratford Festival, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra among others. Since 1976 he has taught music composition and theory at the University of Ottawa.

Born in Toronto, Gellman began his musical training in his native city with Samuel Dolin with whom he studied both the piano and music composition. He began his career as a concert pianist while still a teenager, first drawing acclaim for his 1964 performance of his own piano concerto with the CBC Symphony Orchestra. For that composition he won the BMI Student Composer Award.

In 1965 Gellman entered the Juilliard School in New York City where he studied through 1968 with such teachers as Luciano Berio, Vincent Persichetti, and Roger Sessions. During the summers of 1965 and 1966 he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School where he was a pupil of Darius Milhaud. In 1973 he entered the graduate music composition program at the Conservatoire de Paris where he spent three years studying under Olivier Messiaen. In 1976 he graduated from the conservatoire with a Premier Prix. In 1970 he won the UNESCO prize for "the best work by a composer under the age of 25", for "Mythos" for flute and string quartet.

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