Marilyn J. Ziffrin

Marilyn Jane Ziffrin (August 7, 1926 – March 16, 2018) was an American composer, music educator, author, and musician.

Biography

Early life and education Marilyn Ziffrin was born in Moline, Illinois, to parents Betty S. and Harry B. Ziffrin, (both children of Russian immigrants who emigrated from Belogorodka, Ukraine, due to growing anti-semitism). Harry, who grew up in the then Tri-Cities of Moline, Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, and Betty, who grew up in St. Louis, were first cousins; their fathers were brothers. They both were first cousins of Lester Ziffren, the famous journalist, and Paul Ziffren, the Democratic Party leader from Los Angeles. Harry Ziffrin owned a liquor distributorship in Moline, but every member of the Ziffrin immediate family played a musical instrument. She also taught private composition lessons at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, from 1972 to 1983. While at St. Paul's, one of Ziffrin's compositions students was Augusta Read Thomas, a renowned composer, who remembers Ziffrin as a role model and "an impressive teacher and musician."

She was also the author of Carl Ruggles: Composer, Painter, and Storyteller (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

Music and compositional philosophy 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. Tributum for clarinet, viola and double bass (1992)