Emma Lou Diemer

Emma Lou Diemer is a native of Kansas City, MO. She received degrees in composition from the Yale School of Music (B.M., M.M.) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.), with further study in composition and piano on a Fulbright Scholarship and at the Berkshire Music Center. She has served on the theory/composition faculty of the University of Maryland, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Professor Emeritus.

She has served as organist in churches in Connecticut, New York, Missouri, Washington, D.C., and California. A prolific composer of music for the organ, she has given recitals of her own music at Washington National Cathedral, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Our Lady of the Angeles Cathedral in Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

Emma Lou has been the recipient of awards from ASCAP (annually since 1962), the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, the NEA, Mu Phi Epsilon, the AGO, and the Santa Barbara Symphony, among others. She has also been the recipient of many commissions, including one by the San Francisco Choral Society for her 2005 work for chorus and orchestra, Songs for the Earth.