Samuel Adler is the composer of over 400 published works, including five operas, six symphonies, seventeen concerti, eight string quartets, five oratorios and many other orchestral, band, chamber and choral works and songs, which have been performed all over the world. He is the author of four books, Choral Conducting; Sight Singing; The Study of Orchestration; and the autobiographical Building Bridges With Music. He was educated at Boston University and Harvard University and holds several honorary doctorates. Among his teachers were Herbert Fromm, Walter Piston, Randall Thompson, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Copland, and Serge Koussevitzky. He is Professor-emeritus at the Eastman School of Music where he taught from 1966 to 1995 and served as chair of the composition department from 1974 until his retirement.
Adler’s works have been performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, St Louis Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mannheim National Theater Orchestra; the orchestras of Beijing, Chendu, Frankfurt (Oder), among others.
Adler has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Barlow Foundation, the City of Jerusalem, the Welsh Arts Council and many others.