Jerry Mader

Jerry Mader has been a professional artist working as a classical musician/composer, writer and photographer since 1967. He studied music, music composition, humanities and philosophy at the University of Montana from 1962-1967. His princcipal music composition teacher was Eugene Weigel. From 1969 to 1971 he studied photography with Lee Nye at the University of Montana, Missoula. In 1976 he studied with the American Composer, Michael Colgrass (Pulitzer Prize--1978).

He moved from Montana to the Seattle area in 1978 where he pursued his musical career, recieving commissions from the NW Chamber Orchestra, the Cascade Symphony and the Musica Viva Chamber Players. He taught music composition and theory at the Cornish School for the Arts and taught music and humanities at the Northwest School in Seattle. His photograhs have been exhibited throughout the NW, recently at the Richard Hugo House, Seattle--a combined reading/photography exhibit of "The Road to Lame Deer", in 2006.

In 2007 he founded Tolt Rivr Press, a publishing company dedicated to publishing fine art photography books, Pacific Northwest oral history, fiction and poetry. In addition to "Saving the Soil--The New American Farmer", he also wrote and published "Carnation Verbatim--A Snoqualmie Valley Memoir, 2008, and its audio CD Companion, "Carnation Verbaim--A Portrait in Voices, both published by Tolt River Press. His other published work includeds "The Road to Lame Deer", University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

He has just entered the world of Ebook publishing with the release of two Kindle books in the Amazon Kindle library: "24 Preludes--Poems" and a mystery novel, "Memento Mori".

Jerry Mader lives in Carnation, WA where he continues to write, compose music, make photographs and design books.