Academy Recognizes Yaddo Composers

New York City (February 16, 2011) — Two Yaddo composers — David Dzubay and Rand Steiger — are among 15 recipients of the 2011 American Academy of Arts and Letters music awards, it was announced today, with the formal presentation scheduled for the annual Ceremonial in May.

Dzubay is one of four who will receive a $7,500 Arts and Letters Award in Music, which honors outstanding achievement and acknowledges composers who have arrived at their own voice, plus an additional $7,500 toward the recording of one work. Steiger will be recognized with the Walter Hinrichsen Award, established by music publishers C.F. Peters Corporation to fund the publication of "a work by a gifted composer."

Steiger's compositions have been performed and commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Ircam, San Diego Symphony, Southbank Sinfonia, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Composer Fellow. His recent work explores a hybrid approach to just and equal-tempered tuning and he is deeply involved in computer music research. Many pieces combine orchestral instruments with digital signal processing and spatialization. Steiger is a professor in the Music Department at the University of California at San Diego and is Composer-in-Residence at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Dzubay has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Fromm and Barlow foundations, among others. His recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2010 Heckscher Prize. Dzubay's music has been performed in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia. He is chair of the composition department and director of Indiana University's New Music Ensemble, spent three years as composer-consultant to the Minnesota Orchestra, and one year as composer-in-residence with the Green Bay Symphony. He will join the Brevard Music Center faculty this summer.

Yaddo composers David Del Tredici and Steven Stucky were members of the selection committee. Candidates for the music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which was founded in 1898 to "foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts." This year's awards in music total $165,000.