This week the New York Composers Circle learned of the sad news of the passing of its Board of Directors Chairman, Stephen Leibholz. In addition to his duties as the Chairman of the Board, Steve helped with the technology to bring this website to existence, aided in fundraising, and was a tireless cheerleader in our PR efforts.

The NYCC's founder, Jacob Goodman, wrote the following tribute.

Steve was a man of strong principles, and a capable administrator, who knew how and when to compromise to get things done. He had lots of interests, and was capable of holding an intelligent conversation with just about anyone he encountered, whether about physics, or music, or politics, or a thousand and one other things.

He had been Board Chairman almost since the founding of the NYCC in 2002. I knew him many years ago as a fellow student at NYU: he was one year ahead of me, but our interests overlapped, both in music and in writing. He was an editor of the literary magazine "The Mall" (I still have one or two copies with his byline), and he helped run the radio station WNYU; when I had a program on it called "Symphony at Nine," Steve showed me how to cue records and how to start the turntable running under a record, with the needle in the right place, so that the music would begin immediately after its introduction.

I ran into him years later at his nephew's bar mitzvah, and when we got to talking it soon became clear that he was the right person to chair our fledgling organization. He was happy to agree, and among other ways in which he aided us, he used his various connections in the business world to help us get off the ground.

Steve will be greatly missed, by all of us in the NYCC, not least for his sense of humor and for his willingness to work with people even when he disagreed with them.