Christopher Yavelow:  

Although I did not graduate with my class -- like several others, I transferred to Lasky Prep School, downtown -- I was with many, if not most, of the members of the class of 1968 since first grade. I graduated from Boston University, then Harvard, and finally studied in Europe for five years, ending up with six degrees in music composition. In 1971, after undergraduate school, I began using the professional name "Yavelow," legally appending it to my name the following year. During the 25 years that I was a full-time composer, my music won dozens of prizes. Most recently, I wrote opera. The National Endowment for the Arts commissioned one of my operas, "The Passion of Vincent van Gogh." Later, the National Institute of Music Theater sponsored my chamber opera, "Countdown," which went on to receive accolades as the first computer-assisted opera and the first opera in cyberspace in 1994. (You can listen to one on the web if you search for it by name: "Countdown: An Opera for the Nuclear Age") The fact that I became an opera composer might seem strange to anyone who knew me before I went to college. In the late 1980s, I started writing about music -- mostly articles and books about computer music. For example, my 1400-page Macworld Music and Sound Bible (1993) was the first "Bible" book published by IDG. It was also the first IDG book to win a Computer Press Association Award. From 1984 through 1993, I helped computerize the film and TV music industry. I was living in Studio City, part of North Hollywood. From 1995 through 1999, I was the editor of A-R Editions' acclaimed Computer Music and Digital Audio book series. Before going back to school yet again (at Tyndale Theological Seminary in 1999 in the Netherlands), I held teaching...Expand for more