Ari Sussman

Ari Sussman

  • Boyer College of Music and Dance

    Music Studies

    Adjunct Faculty

    Programs
    • Music Theory
    • Composition

Biography

  • DMA, University of Michigan
  • MM, New England Conservatory of Music
  • BM, New England Conservatory of Music

Praised for his “sophisticated writing” (GTM) and work that “weave(s) a trance-like mystical aura” (Zamir Chorale), Ari Sussman is a Philadelphia-based pianist, clawhammer banjoist and composer of vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic music. His music has been featured and performed throughout the United States and Europe by the KC VITAs Chamber Choir, soprano Tony Arnold, NPR, Zamir Chorale of Boston, Ensemble Ipse, American Modern Ensemble, the Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Tanglewood Music Center and others.
 
Sussman has won the American Composers Forum: Philadelphia Chapter: Young Composers Scholarship, two Honorable Mentions for the Guild of Temple Musicians Young Composers Award, the University of Michigan Brehm Prize in Choral Composition and a “First Music” commission from the New York Youth Symphony. Sussman has received an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, a BMI Student Composer Award and the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship in composition from the Tanglewood Music Center. 
 
An accomplished concert pianist, Sussman has performed many concerts and recitals throughout the Philadelphia, Boston and Ann Arbor areas. With a fondness for musical theatre, Sussman has held music directorships for productions of Hairspray, Les Misérables, The Last Five Years and others. With a love for American traditional/roots music, Sussman plays piano and clawhammer banjo for English country dance bands, Contra-dance bands and Old-time bands.

Sussman holds bachelor of music and master of music degrees with honors in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music where he received the Donald Martino Award for Excellence in Composition, and the doctor of musical arts degree in composition from the University of Michigan. Sussman is currently an adjunct instructor of music theory and composition at the Temple University Boyer College of Music and Dance and the West Chester University Wells School of Music. His primary musical mentors include Michael Gandolfi, Kati Agócs, Evan Chambers and Kristin Kuster.

For more information, visit arisussman.com.