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AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
ANNOUNCES 2007 MUSIC AWARD WINNERS

FIFTEEN COMPOSERS RECEIVE AWARDS TOTALING $165,000

Academy Awards in Music

Goddard Lieberson Fellowships

Walter Hinrichsen Award

Charles Ives Fellowships

Charles Ives Scholarships

Biographies of 2007 Award Winners in Music

Mason Bates (Academy Award) has previously been awarded a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and an American Academy in Berlin Prize. He has performed his concerto for synthesizer with the Atlanta Symphony and the Phoenix Symphony, and is a member of Young Concert Artists. Recent premieres include Digital Loom - a work for organ and electronica commissioned in celebration of Juilliard's 100th Anniversary, Rusty Air in Carolina, commissioned by the Winston-Salem Symphony, and Omnivorous Furniture, for electronica and chamber orchestra, which was premiered at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Disney Hall. It received subsequent performances by the American Composers Orchestra and the Oakland Symphony. This year the National Symphony will premiere Liquid Interface at the Kennedy Center, and the Mobile Symphony premieres Overture to California Fictions. Earning degrees in music composition and English literature, in the joint Columbia-Juilliard program, he worked with John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, and Samuel Adler. He is now working with Edmund Campion and David Wessel at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also worked with Jorge Liderman. Awards include a Charles Ives scholarship and fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Jacob Druckman Memorial Prize from Aspen Music Festival, ASCAP and BMI awards, and a fellowship from Tanglewood Music Center. He makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Chester Biscardi (Academy Award) has had his music featured at the Gaudeamus Festival in Rotterdam, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England, Moscow Autumn, Music Today-Japan in Tokyo, the Thailand Composition Festival in Bangkok, the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the North American New Music Festival in Buffalo, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, Piccolo Spoleto, the International Guitar Festival of Morelia, and the Bienal of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Performances of his music have also been sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra, the BBC-London, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ensemble TIMF of Korea, the Gothia Percussion Ensemble of Sweden, the Houston Symphony, the National Flute Association, the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the Orchestra della Radiotelevisione Italiana in Rome, the Orchestra of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble in New York, and UNESCO/International Music Council. His work is published by C. F. Peters, Merion Music, Inc. of Theodore Presser Company, and Biscardi Music Press; vocal music is distributed by Classical Vocal Reprints. Recordings appear on the Albany, Bridge, CRI (New World Records), Intim Musik (Sweden), New Albion, New Ariel, North/South Recordings, and Sept Jardins (Canada) labels. Biscardi has received a Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Charles Ives scholarship, the Aaron Copland Award, fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio), as well as grants from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, the NEA, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. A native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, he earned an M.A. in Italian Literature and a M.M. in Musical Composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale. He is Director of the Music Program at Sarah Lawrence College, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in Music.

Shih-Hui Chen (Lieberson Fellowship) is a recipient of a Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission, a Barlow Endowment Commission, a Guggenheim fellowship, and an American Academy in Rome Prize. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, she came to the United States in 1982 and earned her master's degree from Northern Illinois University and her doctoral degree from Boston University. She has been awarded grants from the Fromm Foundation, the NEA, Meet the Composer Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Harvard University, and the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation. Her pieces have been performed by members of Seattle Symphony Orchestra; the Boston Modern Orchestra Project; the Fischer Duo, and the Freon Ensemble in Rome, Italy. Shih-Hui Chen is currently an assistant professor of music composition at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, and has been composer-in-residence at Boston University's Tanglewood Institute. She is a music adviser for Formosa Chamber Music Society, an active member of Musiqa, and the Asian Composers' League.

Jeffery Cotton (Hinrichsen Prize) is a native of Los Angeles. He studied with Hans Werner Henze at the Academy of Music in Cologne, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar. Later he studied with George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. He has received a Camargo Foundation fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, a Fromm Foundation commission, and a Bogliasco Foundation grant. His music has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, and the Indianapolis Symphony. He has served as composer-in-residence of the Boston-based Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and was the first composer-in-residence of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. During his tenure there, Cotton created the ensemble's "Second Helpings" series, hailed by the New York Times as "something truly different".

David Fulmer (Charles Ives Scholarship) recently completed his M.M. degree at The Juilliard School and has resumed his studies there as a C.V. Starr Doctoral fellow studying composition with Milton Babbitt and violin with Robert Mann. His honors include the Hannah Komanoff scholarship in composition, the Dorothy Hill Klotzman grant, and the George Whitefield Chadwick Gold Medal. Recent works have been commissioned and written for the Tetras Quartet, Second Instrumental Unit, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Cube Ensemble, Lyndon Academy, and Cygnus Ensemble. As a violinist, he has performed in Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series, Speculum Musicae, the Group for Contemporary Music, at the Lincoln Center Festival, Bates College, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and Boston. He is the co-founder and director of the Second Instrumental Unit, a contemporary music ensemble that recently made its Carnegie Hall debut in Weill Recital Hall last April.

Trevor Gureckis (Charles Ives Scholarship) is working towards a master's degree in composition at the Yale School of Music, where he studies with Ezra Laderman. He attended the University of Texas at Austin for piano performance where he studied with the late Danielle Martin, and for composition with Kevin Puts and Dan Welcher. He wrote his first orchestra piece for the Cabrillo Music Festival's Conductor-Composer Workshop, directed by Marin Alsop. He has been awarded the National Federation of Music Club Emil and Ruth Beyer Award, for a presentation of his music at the United Nations. He works for Philip Glass on film music productions at his studio in New York City.

Ben Johnston (Academy Award) is best known for extending Harry Partch's experiments in just intonation tuning to traditional instruments through his system of notation. His compositions range widely in style, focusing on 20th-century experimental modernism and neoclassicism, folk-song variations, and rock music. Most of his later works use an extremely large number of pitches, generated through just intonation procedures. Johnston's early efforts in just composition drew heavily on the accomplishments of post-Webern serialism. Johnston taught composition and theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1951 to 1983. He began as a traditional composer of art music before working with Harry Partch, helping to build and use insturments in the performance and recording of new compositions. He studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College. Since 1960 Johnston has used, almost exclusively, a system of microtonal notation based on the rational intervals of just intonation. Johnston also worked with John Cage who encouraged him to pursue the composition of just-tuned music for traditional instruments. Johnston has completed ten string quartets to date, and has received many honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1959, a grant from the National Council on the Arts and the Humanities in 1966 and two commissions from the Smithsonian Institute.

Seung-Ah Oh (Lieberson Fellowship) earned her Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from Brandeis University, a Master of Music from the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, a Master of Arts from Brandeis University, and has also received degrees at Ewha Women's University in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently Visiting Lecturer at the University of Florida at Gainesville, and has taught at Brandeis University and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has held fellowships at Tanglewood Music Center and Brandeis University, held a residency at the MacDowell Colony, received scholarships to attend the Aspen Music Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop, and the International Young Composers Meeting at Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. She has studied with Louis Andriessen, Bernard Rands, David Rakowski, Martin Boykan, Yehudi Wyner, Eric Chasalow, John Melby, and Doo-Young Sung.

Arlene Sierra (Charles Ives Fellowship) is an American composer who lives and works in the U.K. Her music has been commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Albany Symphony, the Fenton Arts Trust at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Jerome and PRS Foundations. Performers of her work include the American Composers Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Psappha, Chroma, the Schubert Ensemble of London, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. She studied at Oberlin, Yale, and the University of Michigan and was a composition fellow at Tanglewood and the Britten-Pears School where her teachers included Louis Andriessen and Oliver Knussen. She has received grants and awards from the American Music Center, Society for the Promotion of New Music, the MacDowell Colony, Meet the Composer, and the Takemitsu Prize for Orchestral Composition. Dr. Sierra taught at Cambridge University before her 2004 appointment as lecturer in composition at Cardiff University School of Music.

Dan Visconti (Charles Ives Scholarship) studied composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers are Margaret Brouwer, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and Zhou Long. He is a faculty member of the Young Composers Program at Cleveland Institute of Music. Visconti's compositions have been honored with young composer awards from BMI, ASCAP, and National Association of Composers USA as well the Columbia-Bearns Prize. In addition to grants from the American Music Center, the Barlow Endowment, and Chamber Music America , he has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Villa Montalvo, and Copland House. Recent commissions include works for the Kronos Quartet, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Antares, the Moore/Better Duo, the New York Youth Symphony, the Cleveland Museum of Art's AKI Festival, and the Corigliano Quartet. His music has been performed by Brave New Works, Eighth Blackbird, the Sybarite Quintet, the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Aleksandra Vrebalov (Charles Ives Fellowship) was born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. Her composition teachers include Miroslav Statkic, Zoran Erich, Elinor Armer, and Ivana Loudova. She studied at Novi Sad University, Belgrade University, San Francisco Conservatory, and the Prague Academy of Music. Her compositions have been performed at Davies Hall in San Francisco, Staatsoper in Vienna, the Barbican Centre in London and Theatre de la Ville in Paris. They have been played by the Kronos Quartet, Jorge Caballero, Sausalito String Quartet, Utrect String Quartet (Holland), Tanglewood Music Center, Moravian Philharmonic (Czech Republic), Robert Aitken (Canada), Ad Lbitum Ensemble (Yugoslavia), and Jeunesse Musicale Choir (Yugoslavia). She has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Merkin Concert Hall Zoom Series, Ad Lbitum Ensemble, and the Jancic Fund. Her compositions have been recorded for Nonesuch, TRV Novi Sad, TRV Belgrade, Croatian Radio, Macedonian TV, Novi Sad Academy of Arts Sound Series, and Vienna Modern Masters. She has received the Vienna Modern Masters Recording Award, and an award for the Highsmith Composition Competition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She was been a fellow at the Mac Dowell Colony, Tanglewood, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center.

Jay Wadley (Charles Ives Scholarship) is a National Honorable Mention and regional winner of the 2005 SCI/ASCAP Commission Competition. He is a Master of Music Composition student at Yale University where he studies with Ezra Laderman. Other principal teachers include Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Ingram Marshall and Edward Knight. He has attended master classes with John Corigliano, Evan Ziporyn, Ron Nelson, and David Maslanka. As a baritone vocalist, he has earned 1st place at the National Association of Teachers of Singing vocal competition. He graduated from Oklahoma City University Magna cum Laude with a B.M. in Music Composition, and was voted 2005 Outstanding Male Student by a panel of university faculty and staff.

Zachary R. Wadsworth (Charles Ives Scholarship) is a native of Richmond, Virginia, and is a composer, singer, and pianist. He earned his B.M. degree from the Eastman School of Music, and is a graduate student in composition at Yale University. His composition teachers have included James Willey, Syd Hodkinson, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Ingram Marshall, and Ezra Laderman. He has studied at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Aspen Music School. He has received commissions from The Commission Project, the Hanson Institute for American Music, the Eastman School of Music, Smith College, St. Anne Church, Rochester, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rochester, and Christ Church, Rochester. His pieces have been performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, by ensembles at the Eastman School of Music, Westminster Choir College, Smith College, Yale University, by choirs throughout America and Canada, and by soloists throughout the world. His compositions have received awards from the MTNA, the Eastman School of Music, and ASCAP. He sings with the choir of Christ Church, New Haven, and the Yale Schola Cantorum.

Orianna Webb (Charles Ives Scholarship) Orianna Webb serves on the faculty of the Yale School of Music, and has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Case Western Reserve University, and Yale College. She is a founding faculty member of the Young Composers Program at CIM. She won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize at the Camargo Foundation, and has been commissioned by the ensemble Flexible Music, Society of Composers Inc., and ASCAP. Her music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, the Bowling Green Philharmonia, Flexible Music, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, the Prism Players, the University of Iowa Center for New Music, Vox Novus, and the Mostly Modern Chamber Music Society. She has received honors and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, ASCAP, the American Music Center, SCI, the International Alliance for Women in Music, and the New York Youth Symphony. She has earned degrees in music from the University of Chicago, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Yale School of Music. She has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Margaret Brouwer, John Eaton, Joseph Schwantner, and Roger Zahab, and also with Samuel Adler and Philip Lasser in Paris at the European American Musical Alliance. She is a member of ASCAP.