Composer David Rakowski is 2004-2006 Stoeger Prize Winner

David Rakowski

(New York, NY - February 26, 2004) - Yaddo composer David Rakowski recently received the 2004-2006 Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for "significant contributions to the chamber music repertory." The prize is given every two years and includes a $25,000 cash award.

Mr. Rakowski, who has been a guest artist at Yaddo four times, most recently in the spring of 2003, is a native of Vermont who studied with Robert Ceely and John Heiss at New England Conservatory, with Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard and Paul Lansky at Princeton, and with Luciano Berio at Tanglewood. He has received the Rome Prize, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, BMI, Columbia University, and the International Horn Society.

Works by Mr. Rakowski have been commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the U.S. Marine Band, Sequitur, Network for New Music (Philadelphia), Koussevitzky Music Foundation (for Ensemble 21), Boston Musica Viva, the Fromm Foundation, Dinosaur Annex, the Crosstown Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the Riverside Symphony, Parnassus, The Composers Ensemble, Alea II, Alea III, Triple Helix, and others. He has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, in 2002 for Ten of a Kind, commissioned by the U.S. Marine Band, and in 1999 for Persistent Memory, commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Both pieces were written mostly at Yaddo, and both were finished at Yaddo. Recently, Mr. Rakowski was composer-in-residence at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and guest composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference. His music has been recorded by several labels and has been performed worldwide.

Mr. Rakowski is a founder of the Griffin Music Ensemble of Boston. He has taught at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia universities and is currently Professor of Composition at Brandeis University. Mr. Rakowski's Violin Songs, a work for soprano and violin, will be performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center during its 2004-2005 season.

The Elise L. Stoeger Prize was established in 1985 with a bequest from Milan Stoeger, a longtime subscriber to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in memory of his wife, Elise. Winners are selected from nominations submitted by a committee of musicians, composers, educators, managers, and presenters nationwide, with a nine-member rotating committee making the final selections.