Marilyn Jane Ziffrin (August 7, 1926 - March 16, 2018)[1] was an American composer, music educator, author, and musician.
[1][2] Ziffrin also studied clarinet and saxophone, and soon began composing with a piano piece called "Ode to a Lost Pencil."
She composed a piano concerto, her first large-scale work, which caught the attention of her music history professor, Howard Murphy.
[1][2] After graduating from Columbia, Ziffrin took private composition lessons with Alexander Tcherepnin, who encouraged her to apply for a residency at MacDowell so she could focus on writing music.
"[2] From 1967 to 1982, Ziffrin worked as an Associate Professor of Music at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, where she had moved after her time at MacDowell in the hopes she would be closer to Boston and New York City.
[5] Ziffrin's music was influenced by the works of major European composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Ziffrin composed many pieces in a wide variety of genres, including opera, film scores, wind ensemble, orchestra, and choral music as well as chamber and solo works.