Bio | Sidney Bailin

Composer - Bio

1. Beginnings

I started composing when I was 6. My first piece was in three-part counterpoint. I don't know how I managed that. All I played at the time was recorder.

3. Exile

Already in my mid-teens I was getting more and more interested in mathematics. After one year as a college student at Juilliard, I moved to Columbia University, first as a double major in music and mathematics, then dropping the music

So began what I now think of as a long exile from music, during which I composed only sporadically.

2. Juilliard

I entered Juilliard when I was 15, studying piano with Ania Dorfmann and composition with Hall Overton. Overton taught me the basics of technique. Dorfmann on the other hand would just yell at me. The following year, I left her for private lessons with Jeaneane Dowis.

At 18 I enrolled as a college student at Juilliard, and studied that year with Roger Sessions and Otto Luening. I learned much from both of them. Luening taught me the invaluable lesson of trusting my ear. .

Juilliard School - Alice Tully Hall. Pmasck [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juilliard_School_-_Alice_Tully_Hall.jpg"><img width="512" alt="Juilliard School - Alice Tully Hall" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Juilliard_School_-_Alice_Tully_Hall.jpg/512px-Juilliard_School_-_Alice_Tully_Hall.jpg, Pmasck [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

4. Return

In 2002 I met the person who became my wife. That union, while it lasted, reawakened the deepest and most creative parts of me. I soon realized it was time to start composing seriously again. Now I am happily productive and have been working to get more and more of my music recorded. See my albums page, with links to listen and purchase.

Columbia University Butler Library. By JSquish - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42977224

Cover of book "The Study of Counterpoint from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum"

I learned species counterpoint when I was 10. My teacher was musicologist Gerrit Tetenburg, a brilliant teacher and dear friend, now gone. Though I had many teachers after him, Gerrit was the one who taught me music.