Eleonor Sandresky's music has been described as beautiful, liberating, witty, and as having ever-varying qualities of touch, register and intensity by critics such as Allan Kozinn and Steve Smith of The New York Times. Her work encompasses the acoustic, the electronic and the multi-media, including music for virtuoso soloists and large ensembles, cabaret, art songs, and evening-length collaborations. Her music has been featured in film at Cannes, among other film festivals, and can be heard on Koch International, One Soul Records, ERM Media’s Masterworks of the New Era series, and Albany Records.
Ms. Sandresky has been a composer-in-residence at STEIM in Amsterdam, at The MacDowell Colony in New England, USA, and at the festival in Hvar, Croatia, among others. Current commissions include a NEW WORK for Parthenia, a consort of viols, and baroque harp based on the poetry of John Dunne, to be premiered in 2014. Recent work includes THE MARY OLIVER SONGS BOOK 1 for choreographed pianist playing piano with live electronics, sensor system and video, which she premiered at I-Beam in Brooklyn, NY, and her SUITE FOR STRING QUARTET, premiered by Ethel in NYC. Her music has been heard on three continents, from the Philadelphia Fringe Festival to the Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth, Australia. She has received grants and commissions from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, ASCAP, American Music Center, and Meet the Composer.
She is at the same time one of New York’s pre-eminent new music pianists, with performances and premieres of new works by a wide range of composers from Egberto Gismonti to Philip Glass. She has recorded for CRI, Nonesuch, One Soul Records, New World Records, Mode Records, and Orange Mountain Music, and plays concerts throughout the world.
Working at the forefront of avant-garde concert-as-theater, Eleonor has reinvented herself as a Choreographic Pianist with her evening-length composition, A Sleeper’s Notebook, that she premiered at the Kitchen as a part of the Composers Collaborative, Inc Keyboard Summit in 2003. In it she explores her deep interest in how motion translates to emotion through sound, a hyper-emotional experience for the audience and the performer. Michele Branwen of HoustonArts, remarks that “Her vision has a freshness and unusualness that has become rare in the avant-garde scene, and her delivery is captivating and true,” and Steve Smith has this to say in TimeOut NY about the piece, "A Sleeper's Notebook maps in vivid detail a nocturnal terrain in constant flux." Her latest pieces build on these concepts and create them for herself as well as other performers.
As a music director, she has led ensembles in a variety of theatrical settings, from dance performances with Susan Marshall to conducting to film with the Philip Glass Ensemble, of which she was a member from 1991 - 2004. In addition, Eleonor has coached Einstein on the Beach in Berlin presented by a local ensemble, and worked with students in a variety of settings as lecturer, teacher and coach, at both the Houston School for the Arts and the North Carolina School for the Arts, among others.
She is also active as a producer and artistic director, having created events that most recently include Music After, a commemorative marathon concert for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and West Side Story Film with Live Orchestra that premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in 2011. In 1996, she co-founded Mata, a festival of new music in New York City that celebrates works by young composers from around the world.
She holds two master’s degrees: in composition from Yale School of Music, studying with Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, and Anthony Davis; and in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music studying with Rebecca Penneys, while coaching with Steven Doane, Sylvia Rosenberg and Paul Katz. She also trained at the Banff Centre for the Arts in chamber music with Gyorgy Sebok, Franco Gulli and Aldo Parisot.
photo by Robin Holland