"As a child I woke up to classical music, which my father played full blast throughout the house. During the 50s and 60s I played the piano and listened to a lot more classical music as well as bebop jazz while everyone else was listening to Elvis and the Beatles. My musical education at Sarah Lawrence, New England Conservatory, and Columbia positioned me at the height of post-Webern serialism and Schenkerian analysis. Against this rigorous training the harmonies of jazz, hidden in my subconscious, gradually began to enter my music as I discovered the chords were the same as Schoenberg and Stravinsky's with different spacing. Additionally the images and emotions in my music have been infused with my lifelong interests in literature, poetry, modern dance, art history, and psychology."
Eleanor Cory’s work has been recognized by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Fromm Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund, Yale University, MacDowell Colony, and PSC-CUNY Research Foundation. She has received an American Composers Alliance Recording Award as well as prizes from the Hollybush and Kucyna International Composition Competitions, the Music of Changes, International New Music, Davenport, and New Jersey Guild of Composers Competitions.
Her music is recorded on the CRI, Opus One, Capstone, and Advance labels. She has two solo CDs: “Of Mere Being “(CRI, 2002) and “Images,” (Soundspells, 1996). Her music is published by C.F. Peters, the Association for the Promotion of New Music, and Soundspells Productions/Phantom Press.
Her music has been performed throughout the United States and in England, the Soviet Union, Canada, and Poland. Performances and commissions of her work include the New Jersey Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Chamber Symphony of Princeton, Colonial Symphony, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, DaCapo Chamber Players, Bronx Arts Ensemble, Atlantic String Quartet, Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, League-ISCM, Washington Square Contemporary Music Series, Composers Concordance, Guild of Composers, Momenta String Quartet, Friends and Enemies of New Music, New York Virtuoso Singers, Gregg Smith Singers, Alea III, Earplay, and soloists Ursula Oppens, Curtis Macomber, Margaret Kampmeier, Christopher Oldfather, Elizabeth Farnum, Alek Karis, Gregory Fulkerson, Jayn Rosenfeld, Sue Ann Kahn, Patricia Spencer, Chris Finckel, David Holzman, and Louise Schulman.
Cory studied at Sarah Lawrence College (BA), Harvard Graduate School of Education (MAT), New England Conservatory (MM), and Columbia University (DMA). Her compostition teachers include Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bulent Arel and Meyer Kupferman. She has taught at Yale University, Baruch College, Manhattan School of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, Brooklyn College, and The New School for Social Research and currently teaches at Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College, CUNY.