Elias Tanenbaum received a B.S. from the Juilliard School of Music and an M.A. from Columbia University. He studied composition with Dante Fiorillo, Bohuslav Martinu, Otto Luening, and Wallingford Riegger.

Mr. Tanenbaum has composed over 100 works in all idioms, including works for concert, jazz, theater, television, ballet and electronic and computer music. His music has been performed extensively throughout the world by orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonia, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Westchester Philharmonic and many other performing groups.

He was a recipient of WCBS commission in 1966, a MacDowell Fellowship, two Composers’ Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974 and 1989, a Ford Foundation Recording Grant in1970, American Composers Alliance Recording Award (awarded twice, 1975 and 1979), a Composers’ Grant from the New York State Foundation for the Arts in 1989 and numerous “Meet the Composer” grants. He was a visiting composer at the California Institute for the Arts in 1983 and a visiting lecturer at Stuttgart Conservatory in 1993.

A pioneer of electronic music Mr. Tananbaum was Director of the Electronic Computer Music Studio and a member of the composition faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City since 1970.