Ezra Sims

He has lectured on his music in the US and abroad, most notably at the Hamburger Musikgespräch, 1994; the second Naturton Symposium in Heidelberg, 1992; and the 3rd and 4th Symposium, Mikrotöne und Ekmelische Musik, at the Hochschüle für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mozarteum, Salzburg, in 1989 & 1991. In 1992–93, he was guest lecturer in the Richter Herf Institut für Musikalische Grundlagenforschung in the Mozarteum.

He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitsky commission, and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, as well as numerous commissions from organizations like the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and private individuals. He was a co-founder of the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, with Rodney Lister and Scott Wheeler, for which he served as president from 1977 to 1981 and as a member of the Board of Directors from 1981 to 2003.

His professional debut (12 note ET music) occurred on a Composers Forum program in New York, 1959. In 1960, compelled by his ear, he began writing microtonal music, and continued to do so for the rest of his life, with the occasional exception being taped music for dancers. His last composition in quarter tones (his sixth microtonal one) was his Third Quartet (1962). Since 1971, whatever music he has composed that is not purely electronic has employed a system of asymmetrical modes of 18 pitches per octave, drawn from a 72-note division of the octave.

Ezra Sims (January 16, 1928 in Birmingham, Alabama — January 30, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts) was one of the pioneers in the field of microtonal composition. He invented a system of notation that was adopted by many microtonal composers after him, including Joseph Maneri.