Joel Chadabe, composer, author, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the development of interactive music systems. He has concertized widely since 1969, with Jan Williams, Bruno Sperri, and other musicians, presenting his music at venues and festivals such as Klangprojektionen 4.4 (Vienna), Ear to the Earth (New York City), Computing Music IV (Cologne), HörZeit-SpielRaum 2005 (Berlin), ISCM Festival (Miami), NYU Interactive (NYC), New Mix (Palais de Tokyo, Paris), Chelsea Art Museum (New York), Expanded Instruments Festival (Engine 27, New York City), Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires), Venice Biennale, Wellington Festival (New Zealand), Aarhus Festival (Denmark), De Isbreker (Amsterdam), New Music America, Inventionen (Berlin), IRCAM (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Electronic Music Festival (Stockholm), and New Music New York. His music is recorded on EMF Media, Deep Listening, CDCM, Centaur, Lovely Music, Opus One, CP2, and Folkways labels.

As president of Intelligent Music from 1983-1994, he was responsible for the development and publication of a wide range of innovative and historically important software, including M and Max, as well as the TouchSurface, an xyz touch-sensitive computer input device. In 1977, with Roger Meyers, he co-authored The PLAY Program, the first software sequencer. In 1967, while director of the Electronic Music Studio at State University of New York at Albany (1965 - 1998), he designed the CEMS (Coordinated Electronic Music Studio) System, an analog-programmable electronic music system, and commissioned Robert Moog to build it.

He was keynote speaker at the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) Conference in 2002 in Dublin, sponsored by the MIT Media Lab; at the International Computer Music Conference in Berlin in 2000; and at the International Music and Technology Conference (University of Melbourne, Australia, 1981), where he first coined the term 'interactive composing'. He has presented papers at EMS05 (Montreal), Resonances (IRCAM, Paris), Intersens (Marseilles), ISEA98 (Liverpool), at several SEAMUS and ICMC conferences, and at many other conferences; participated in panels at WISP (Sydney), ICMC 05 (Barcelona), and at many other conferences and symposia; and presented lectures, workshops, and demonstrations at Florida International University, IRCAM, Zurich Conservatory, Brown University, Experience Music Project (Seattle), University of Californa at Santa Barbara, CCMIX (Paris), University of California at San Diego, and at many other universities and venues. He has received awards, fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, SUNY Research Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and other foundations. He was the winner of the Grossen Preises der Ars Electronica, 2nd Prize (Linz, Austria, 1982), and he is the recipient of the 2007 SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award.

As author, his book 'Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music', published by Prentice Hall in November 1996, is the first comprehensive overview of the history of electronic music. His articles on electronic music have appeared in Organized Sound, Leonardo, Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Leonardo, Journal of New Music Research, Leonardo Music Journal, Electronic Musician, Perspectives of New Music, Electronic Music Review, Melos, Musique en Jeu, and many other journals and magazines, and several of his articles have been anthologized in books by MIT Press, Routledge, Feltrinelli, and other publishers.

Mr. Chadabe has a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.M. degree from Yale University, where he studied composition with Elliott Carter. He is currently Professor Emeritus at State University of New York at Albany; Director of the Computer Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music; Visiting Faculty at New York University; and Founder and President of Electronic Music Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that organizes concerts and other events and disseminates information and materials relating to the history and current practice of electronic music.