Dennis Eberhard

Who was Dennis Eberhard?

Dennis Eberhard was an American composer. In his youth he was crippled by polio, which contributed to respiratory problems that contributed to his death in 2005. Eberhard was an active composer for more than 30 years and was a member of the Cleveland Composers Guild and Vox Novus.

He was educated at Cleveland Institute of Music, Kent State University, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, Poland. His teachers included: Marie Martin, Frederic Coulter, Salvatore Martirano, Wlodzimierz Kotonski, Gordon Mumma and Herbert Brün. Composing both concert music and music for film and theater, Mr. Eberhard also worked with John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, participating in the realization of their compositions Music Circus and HPSCHD. He taught at the University of Illinois, Western Illinois University, the University of Nebraska, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Cleveland State University, while lecturing widely on his own music at such institutions as the Cleveland Institute of Music, Cornell University, Penn State, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the University of New Mexico, and the São Paulo State University in Brazil.