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Biography
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Halim El Dabh
Egyptian-born, American composer, Halim El-Dabh (b. 1921) has studied with several giants of twentieth-century musical composition and conducting: Leopold Stokowsky, Irving Fine, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Copland, to name just these few. A recipient of numerous honors, awards, and grants including a Rockefeller fellowship (1962), two Fulbright awards (1950, 1967), and two Guggenheim fellowships (1959, 1961), El-Dabh has heard his compositions performed at the Metropolitan Opera House, the Cairo Opera House, the Edinburgh Festival, as well as, in Amsterdam, Athens, Paris, London, and Rome. His music is well known in his birthplace where his "Sound and Lights of the Pyramids of Giza" (1960), a spectacle that captures the mystery of the ancient structures in narration, lights, and music, is performed daily at the pyramids.
In the late 1950s, El-Dabh worked with electronic-music pioneers Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Columbia/Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was commissioned by choreographer and modern dance innovator, Martha Graham, to write the music for "Clytemnestra" (1958), "One More Gaudy Night" (1961), "A Look at Lightning" (1962), and "Lucifer" (1975). Ignoring a chance for imminent acclaim and recognition, El- Dabh chose to leave New York to conduct research in Egypt and Ethiopia and never quite recaptured his opportunity for celebrity.
El-Dabh, a specialist in Egyptian puppetry traditions, has been recognized for his achievements with biographical entries in major musical sources, i.e., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, Who's Who in American Music, The International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory, and The International Dictionary of Black Composers.
His teaching career includes Haile Selassie University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Associate Professor of Music, 1962-64; Howard University, Washington, D.C., Associate Professor of Music and African Studies, 1966-69; Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Adjunct Professor of Pan-African Studies, 1969-1991; co- director, Kent State Center for the Study of World Music, since 1979; appointed University Professor, 1989, Professor Emeritus, 1991.
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