Biography

Peter Lieberson was born on October 25, 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Warrior Songs: King Gesar (1997), Charlie Chaplin: The Little Tramp (1980) and Concerto at Work (1985). He was married to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Ellen Kearney and Rinchen Lhamo. He died on April 23, 2011 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Son of Goddard Lieberson and Vera Zorina.

He is survived by his third wife, Rinchen Lhamo; his daughters, Katherine Liebersen, Christina Liebersen, and Elizabeth Liebersen from his first marriage to Ellen Kearney.

He studied music composition at Columbia University in New York City. He earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He taught music composition at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1984 to 1988.

He studied Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism at Columbia University in New York City. He moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1976 to continue his studies with Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts with his first wife, Ellen Kearney, to direct Shambala Training, a meditation and cultural program. He served as international director of Shambhala Training in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada since the family moved in 1988.

He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the time of his death. He was seeking treatment in Tel Aviv, Israel for lymphoma.

The poetry of the Lutheran chorale has an elegiac quality but at the same time conveys a sense of renewal and rebirth and of the possibilities of basic human goodness.