Tobias Picker was born in New York City in 1954, and by the age of 8 had begun to play the piano and compose.
Musical prodigies are rare, but sustained, resplendent musical inspiration is still rarer.
After studies with Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music, with Elliott Carter at Juilliard, and with Milton Babbitt at Princeton, Picker launched a career that traces a dazzling course. From the start, his talent has been both sought after and honored. Before he was 30 he had received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1980 Picker has received over thirty commissions from many of the world's leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists - among them, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, pianists Ursula Oppens and Peter Serkin, violinist Young Uck Kim, soprano Barbara Hendricks, and flutist Carol Wincenc. His music is performed around the world by such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony.