On Sunday mornings I would sit in the living room picking out tunes on my purple toy piano while my grandmother helped me find the missing notes. When my repertoire reached a critical mass my parents bought a $200 upright and I began lessons.  I progressed quickly but found I preferred playing by ear and arranging rock ’n roll songs I heard on the radio to practicing my sonatas and sonatinas.  At 13 I  asked to play another instrument. My father, a chemist, asked his colleagues at work what would be a good choice. Being practical scientists their recommendation was the string bass …. because not many people played it.

At college a very charismatic, well dressed Italian composer, Arnold Franchetti —who, because his father was director of the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, had grown up sitting on Puccini’s knee, and later went on to study with Richard Strauss at the Mozarteum — said to me,

‘Mr. Ira, you are a composer’. 
Who was I to disagree ? Why would I? 
And so it began. 

Ira is a graduate of Trinity College, Hartt College of Music, and Princeton University, with additional studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (1st prize in composition Wettbewerb Neue Musik), Wiener Hochschule für Musik, IRCAM in Paris, and Stanford University’s CCRMA. Though an instrumental composer by training and inclination he is equally well known for his digital works, as well as pieces for instruments and synchronized digital soundtracks. His very first computer piece, A la Memoire d’un Ami  won the prestigious 1st  prize at the Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Bourges and is the title piece of his critically acclaimed CD (New Albion 047), and also available for listening on Spotify.