Ronald Sadoff

Ronald Sadoff

New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Associate Professor of Music and Music Education: Composer

Phone: 998 5779
Email: ron.sadoff@nyu.edu

• Music and Performing Arts Professions
• Music Composition

RONALD SADOFF is the Director of the Film Scoring Program in NYU Steinhardt, having authored both its curriculum and core courses.  Sadoff composed the score for John Canemaker's, The Moon and The Son: An Imagined Conversation, starring John Turturro and Eli Wallach. The film premiered at MoMa and was awarded the Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006. The film's broadcast debut was for HBO/Cinemax. Sadoff's most recent score was for Academy Award winning director Peggy Stern's Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood. The film screened twice at The Telluride FIlm Festival in August 2008 and 2009, as part of a Warner Brothers retrospective. Produced by Warner Bros. and Turner Classic Movies, Chuck Jones screened on TCM on March and August 2009 in tandem with a group of rarely screened Looney Toons.  Sadoff has been featured on CNN's weekend entertainment segments, having composed scores for film, radio, and television, including the acclaimed PBS Daughters of the Troubles featuring Angelica Huston, and the Oscar and Directors Guild winning film, Bleach. His theme and incidental music for Public Radio's What's On Your mind? was heard thoughout its twelve year broadcast. The theme for NYU Doctor Radio, now heard in forty hours of weekly programming on Sirius Satellite Radio, was co-composed with Ira Newborn.

In a melding of live performance and film, Dr. Sadoff, in collaboration with Tisch School of the Arts Animation Director John Canemaker, have presented a decade-long series of performances of Silent Films with live ensembles for the Film Society of Lincoln Center: Toons, Tunes, and Trikfilms.  As part of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, Sadoff produced an 80 minute score, composed by film scoring students, for Rene Clair's 1928 silent masterpiece Les Deux Timides.  Performed by the NYU Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Gillian B. Anderson and narrated by Tribeca's Artisic Director Peter Scarlet, the performances were met by worldwide acclaim.  

With "Disney Legend" Buddy Baker, Dr. Sadoff founded the NYU/ASCAP Foundation Film Scoring Workshop, a premiere and intensive training ground, now entering its ninth season. The Buddy Baker Film Score Collection, donated by Charlotte Baker is a part of the Fales Special Collections within the NYU Bobst Library.  The Leonard Rosenman Collection, donated by Judie Rosenman, was inaugurated into the collection in Spring 2009.  Dr. Sadoff serves as co-Director of the East Coast branch of the LA-based Film Music Society, David Newman president.  Earlier Film Music Society conferences presented at NYU featured composers David Raksin, Howard Shore, and Toru Takemitsu.

Serving in the capacity of Creative Director and Music Supervisor, Dr. Sadoff produced interactive web sites in opera, film music, and the largest live webcast of its day, Michael Jackson and Friends from Munich, Germany. He served as the Executive Producer for the 2004 Koch International release of an all-Khachaturian CD featuring pianist Boris Berezovsky.  As a pianist, the New York Times wrote, "Sadoff played with a sure understanding of the structural requirements of the music - an impressive, strong, and incisive performance." Sadoff was featured on WQXR's Young Artist's Showcase and has performed throughout the United States and Europe. An avid proponent of 20th century music, he premiered works by Prix de Rome composer Kenneth Frazelle, and can be heard on the CD release, "New Sounds from the Village" on the Capstone label.

Dr. Sadoff, along with conductor/musicologist Gillian B. Anderson, is the co-founder and co-editor of the University of Illinois Press journal Music and the Moving Image.  He also serves as Chair for the NYU Steinhardt conference of the same name, which presents over seventy scholarly papers each year.  He co-edited the 2005:1 issue of Film International and the Spring 2004 issue of American Music. A dedicated issue to "Music and Moving Image," it included his co-written introduction and an article entitled Composition by Corporate Committee: Recipe For Cliche.  For the fifth edition of Guide To Research In Music Education (Scarecrow), he co-authored a chapter entitled Technology in Music Education Research. the recipient of a Steinhardt Research Challenge Grant in 2001 and the Goddard Research Award in 2003, Dr. Sadoff is currently co-authoring the 3rd edition of Film Music: A Neglected Art with Roy M. Prendergast for W.W. Norton.

His 2006 article, The role of the Music Editor and the Temp Track as blueprint for the Score, Source, and ‘Scource’ Music of Film for Popular Music (Cambridge Univ Press) provides a rare window into the underlying aesthetic of post-production practices in Hollywood. Dr. Sadoff's discussion of composer Oliver Wallace is featured on the bonus DVD for Disney's 50th anniversary edition of Lady and the Tramp.