Composer News: Donald Erb

Donald Erb, longtime composition teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music has passed away.
Of his music, Mr. Erb has said: "A craftsman can create entertainment, but you need more than that to create art. You need an emotional, inspirational quality, because in and of itself craft means nothing. There has to be something inside you pushing out or all a person will ever write is a craftsman-like piece. And that's not quite good enough."
Described by Nicolas Slonimsky in the Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians as a "significant American composer," Donald Erb was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1927. His orchestral music has been played by literally every major orchestra in the United States and by many eminent ensembles in Europe and Australia. He has received major commissions from the Dallas Symphony and the Houston Symphony, among many others. His composition The Seventh Trumpet has been performed more than two hundred times by over fifty orchestras in the United States and abroad, and was chosen as the United States representative to UNESCO in 1970.
Erb's notable students include Margaret Brouwer, John Mackey, Nickitas J. Demos, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Christopher Kaufman, Kathryn Alexander, Kenneth Durling, John S. Hilliard, and James Mobberly.
Hear some of his music online at Art of States.