Music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
Steven Stucky
SUNY Fredonia’s Ethos New Music Society will present the music of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Steven Stucky on Saturday, Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. in Rosch Recital Hall on the SUNY Fredonia campus, as part of the 13th annual NewSound Festival. Dr. Stucky was originally scheduled to attend this concert, but due to unforeseen circumstances, he will be visiting campus later in the semester.
The NewSound Festival showcases the music of the 20th and 21st century by featuring composers, performers, and lecturers from across the country and is made possible by the SUNY Fredonia Student Association. The concert will cost $3 for students and $6 general admission.
The concert will feature performances by SUNY Fredonia faculty Andrew Seigel, Wildy Zumwalt, David Colwell, Dmitri Novgorodsky, I-Fei Chen, and Matthew Wilson and students Robin Morace and Timothy Bausch.
Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, Stucky is one of America’s most highly regarded and frequently performed living composers. He is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, a director of New Music USA, a board member of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Stucky is also active as a conductor, writer, lecturer, and teacher.
Notable world premieres in recent seasons include Rhapsodies (2008) by the New York Philharmonic at London’s BBC Proms in August 1964, by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Concerto by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Piano Quintet at Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest festival. Stucky was also honored with a 60th birthday concert at Cornell University, where he is professor of composition. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Second Concerto for Orchestra – described in the New York Times as “an electrifying piece” – was commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2004.
As a teacher and mentor to young composers, Stucky has served on the Warsaw jury of the Witold Lutoslawski Competition for Composers. His highly-esteemed expertise on the late composer’s music has been recognized with the Lutoslawski Society’s medal and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his critical biography, Lutoslawski and His Music (1981). He is consultant to the Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2013 centennial celebrations of the composer in London.
Stucky was Composer-in-Residence of the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2001 and 2010, director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2005, and the first Barr Institute Composer Laureate appointed at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Among other honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bogliasco Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP Victor Herbert Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Letters, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Stucky’s first Concerto for Orchestra was one of two finalists for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in Music. He has taught at Cornell University since 1980, chaired the Music Department from 1992 to 1997, and now serves as Given Foundation Professor of Composition. He has been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music and Ernest Bloch Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
