Chadabe was born in the Bronx on December 12, 1938, to Solon Chadabe, a lawyer, and Sylvia Chadabe (née Cohen), a homemaker. Joel attended grade school at the Bentley School in Manhattan, where he studied piano, and later graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1959 with a degree in music, despite his parents' desire for him to become a lawyer. Chadabe then continued his education at Yale University under Elliott Carter, graduating in 1962 with a master's degree in music.[9]
Career
Upon completing his education at Yale, Chadabe and Carter traveled to Rome, where they continued their professional relationship.[9] Chadabe was interested in studying jazz and opera, but ultimately accepted an offer from the State University of New York at Albany to direct its electronic music studio in 1965.[9] He and Robert Moog designed the CEMS (Coordinated Electronic Music System), a Moog modular "super synthesizer" housed at the electronic music studios at Albany which incorporated an early digital sequencer, and he later acquired a Synclavier digital synthesizer for the university.[9]
He was the president of Intelligent Music from 1983 to 1994,[3][10] and founded the Electronic Music Foundation in 1994.[11] Chadabe was the curator at New York sound gallery Engine 27 in 2000–01.[12] He was given a SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.[13]
Chadabe, Joel (1997). Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. ISBN978-0-13-303231-4.
Chadabe, Joel (1975). "The Voltage-controlled Synthesizer", The Development and Practice of Electronic Music (Jon H. Appleton and Ronald Perera, eds.). ISBN978-0-13-207605-0.