Laderman was of Jewish heritage. His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Though poor, the family had a piano. He wrote, "At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down. I hardly knew it then, but I had at a very early age made a giant step to becoming a composer." He attended New York City's High School of Music and Art.[1]
We were in Caversham, England poised to enter the war. It was here that I learned that my brother Jack had been shot down and killed in Germany. The Battle of the Bulge, crossing the Rhine at Remagen, liberating Leipzig, meeting the Russians at Torgau on the bank of the Elbe were the points in this constellation that was filled with tension and waiting, victory and grief. We became aware of the horror, and what we now call the 'holocaust,' while freeing Leipzig.[2]
During the weeks after the war was over, Laderman composed his Leipzig Symphony. This work brought him recognition within the army, and subsequently he was assigned as orchestrator of the GI Symphony Orchestra.
Laderman has been commissioned three times by the Philadelphia Orchestra, twice by the National, Louisville and Chicago Symphonies as well as from the New York Philharmonic, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Syracuse, Denver, Columbus, Albany, and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. In 1971 he collaborated with Alfredo Antonini – Musical Director of the CBS Symphony Orchestra during the television premier of his opera And David Wept.. In addition he has written for such distinguished artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Sherrill Milnes, Aldo Parisot, Samuel Baron, David Shifrin, Ransom Wilson, Judith Raskin, Elmar Oliveira, Erica Morini, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Toby Appel, and Leonard Arner, among many others.[5][6][7][8]
^via Associated Press. "Composer Named Dean Of Yale Music School", The New York Times, April 15, 1989. Accessed October 24, 2011. "Mr. Laderman, 64 years old, a resident of Teaneck, N.J., and of Woods Hole, Mass., is chairman of the American Composers' Orchestra and president of the National Music Council."