Ronald Perera Composer

RONALD PERERA’s (1941 – 2023) compositions include operas, song cycles, chamber, choral and orchestral works, and several works for instruments or voices with electronic sounds. He is perhaps best known for his settings of texts by authors as diverse as Dickinson, Joyce, Grass, Sappho, Cummings, Shakespeare, Francis of Assisi, Melville, Ferlinghetti and Updike. Several major pieces are represented on compact disc. Reviewing CRI CD 796 for Fanfare magazine, critic John Story writes, “Three Poems of Gunter Grass is, quite simply, one of the most haunting works of the last 25 years.” Reviewing The Outermost House on Albany Troy 314 he writes, “When he is on form, Ronald Perera is among the finest living combiners of words and music alive [sic]…The music is simply lovely.”