Discipline: Music Composition

Esther Ballou

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1944, 1945, 1954, 1955
Esther Ballou (1915-1973) was an American composer, organist and educator from Elmira, NY. Ballou began playing organ when she was 13, and began composing in her twenties. She received degrees from Bennington College, Mills College and The Julliard School of Music. Ballou went on to teach composition at The Julliard School, Catholic University, and at American University. Her Capriccio for Violin and Piano was the first work by an American woman composer to be premiered at the White House barely three months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Studios

New Jersey

Esther Ballou worked in the New Jersey studio.

The yellow clapboard New Jersey Studio, located on a grassy, sloping site, was funded by the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs and built as an exact replica of Monday Music Studio (1913). The studio’s porch rests on fieldstone piers that increase in height as the ground slopes to the west. Like Monday Music Studio, New Jersey…

Learn more