Judith Lang Zaimont
Born: November 8, 1945, Memphis, TN
“Nobody ever told me that any women wrote music...Did it stop me? No. I knew I was born to write music.”
BIOGRAPHY MUSIC & RECORDINGS SOURCES
Judith Lang Zaimont was raised in a musical Jewish family in Memphis, Tennessee and began studying piano with her mother at 5-years-old. Her early musical accomplishments led her to pursue composing by age 12. Two years later she received a scholarship to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at Juilliard Preparatory. Judith and her sister, Doris Lang Kosloff (who became a successful opera conductor, the Artistic Director of Opera Connecticut, and an educator), were a duo-piano team in their teens and secured professional management. They toured across the USA, performing with orchestras and on radio shows, including the Lawrence Welk show. They made their Carnegie Hall debut in 1963.
Zaimont attended CUNY Queens, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts. Her sister followed in her footsteps a few years later. Judith won the Broadcast Music Inc. Student Composers award for Four Songs for Mezzo-soprano and piano after which she began studying with composer Hugo Weisgall. She completed graduate studies by age 22 at Columbia University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship where she studied with Otto Luening and Jack Beeson. Following her graduate studies she was awarded the Debussy Fellowship from Alliance Française for a year’s study of orchestration with Andre Jolivet in Paris.
Zaimont’s compositional output includes 70 art songs, a number of works for chorus, piano, chamber, and orchestral works, many of which were commissioned and performed throughout the US and in France, Germany, Australia and England. When searching for text, she writes, “I’ll go to the library and take out an entire shelf of poetry anthologies just to find three or four individual poems suitable for use as lyrics…Very often I will hear in my head a linear contour, a rhythmic setting- in short, the whole musical setting, complete.”
In addition to composing, Zaimont taught at CUNY Queens College from 1972-1977, the Peabody Conservatory at John Hopkins University from 1980-1987 (where she was named Teacher of the Year in 1985), at Adelphi University, where she was the Chair of the Department of Music from 1988-1991, and at the University of Minnesota from 1991-2005 where she was the Chair of the Division of Theory and Composition and a Scholar of the College of Liberal Arts from 2002-2005.
In 1981, Zaimont, along with Karen Famera, compiled and edited the reference book, Contemporary Concert Music by Women: A directory of the composers and their work, which includes information about works by 72 composers. This project was designated by the International League of Women Composers, of which Zaimont was a founding member. Later, she was editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed three-volume book series, The Musical Woman: An International Perspective. For her research work, Zaimont has received several major awards including a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and First Prize in the international musicology awards (Pauline Alderman Prize) in 1993. Zaimont helped found the Maricopa Music Circle in 2010 and currently serves as a Co-Director of Maricopa Arts Council (MAC).
A prolific musician, teacher, and writer, Zaimont has been a major contributor to 20th century music. Her oeuvre includes rich and varied colors and textures, distinctive emotional and expressive strength, and an inventive style. While she has retired from full-time academic work, she is often sought after for master classes and private composition lessons. She resides in Maricopa, AZ with her husband, Gary Zaimont, a teacher and artist.