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W. Claude Baker Jr. (born April 12, 1948 Lenoir, North Carolina) is an American composer of contemporary classical music.
Claude Baker attained a B.M. degree, magna cum laude, from East Carolina University in 1970. He subsequently studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler and Warren Benson, and holds M.M. (1973) and D.M.A. (1975) degrees from that institution.
He is currently Class of 1956 Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Composition in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is also the recipient of the university-wide Tracy M. Sonneborn Award for accomplishments in the areas of teaching and research. Before his appointment at Indiana, he served on the faculties of the University of Georgia and the University of Louisville, and was a visiting professor at the Eastman School of Music. In the eight-year period from 1991 to 1999, he held the position of Composer-in-Residence of the St. Louis Symphony, one of the longest such residencies with any major orchestra in the country. During this time, he initiated numerous community-based projects, the most notable of which was the establishment of composition programs at multiple grade levels in the St. Louis Public Schools. In recognition of his contributions to the cultural life of the city, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1999.
His music has been championed by such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Mario Venzago, Robert Spano, Gerhardt Zimmermann, Gilbert Varga, Juanjo Mena, and Giancarlo Guerrero, and by soloists including Marc-André Hamelin, Eugene Rousseau, Claire Huangci, Tzimon Barto, Jon Garrison, and Ana Higueras. Among the many orchestras in addition to St. Louis that have commissioned and/or performed his music are those of San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Nashville, as well as the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Staatskapelle Halle, Orchestre National de Lyon, and Das Berner Symphonieorchester. Performances of his chamber works have been presented by Alarm Will Sound, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Voices of Change, American Modern Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, Locrian Chamber Players, Ensemble Connect, Momenta String Quartet, and the Pacifica String Quartet (with pianist Ursula Oppens). His music is published by Keiser Southern and Carl Fischer, and is recorded on the Naxos, Innova, ACA, Jeanné, IUMusic, TNC, Gasparo, and Louisville First Edition labels.
The professional honors he has received as a composer include an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards; [1] a "Manuel de Falla" Prize from the Government of Spain; the Pogorzelski-Yankee Prize from the American Guild of Organists; the Eastman-Leonard and George Eastman Prizes; awards from ASCAP, BMI, and the League of Composers/ISCM; commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, and Meet the Composer (now, New Music USA); a Paul Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome; a Copland House Residency Award; and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, and the state arts councils of Indiana, Kentucky, and New York. In 2021, he was named as the recipient of the A. I. duPont Composer's Award from the Delaware Symphony Orchestra for his “significant contribution to the field of contemporary classical music.”
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician from Indianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit.
George Theophilus Walker was an American composer, pianist, and organist, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker was married to pianist and scholar Helen Walker-Hill between 1960 and 1975. Walker was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker.
Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
Eric Ewazen is an American composer and teacher.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
P. Q. Phan, is a Vietnamese composer of contemporary classical music living in the United States. He became interested in music while studying architecture in 1978 and taught himself to play the piano, compose, and orchestrate. In 1982, he immigrated to the United States and began his formal musical training.
David Liptak is an American composer and music educator who is a professor of composition and the current chair of the Composition Department at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.
Kevin Matthew Puts is an American composer, best known for his opera The Hours and for winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera Silent Night and a Grammy Award in 2023 for his concerto Contact.
Laura Elise Schwendinger was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin's Berlin Prize.
Michael Schelle, born January 22, 1950, in Philadelphia, is a composer of contemporary concert music. He is also a performer, conductor, author, and teacher.
Eric Guinivan is a composer, percussionist, founding member of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and was principal timpanist of the YMF Debut Orchestra. He has received commissions from Chamber Music America, the Fromm Foundation, New York Youth Symphony, the International Horn Society, Lake Union Civic Orchestra, the Firebird Ensemble, Staunton Music Festival, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, and the Society of Composers, Inc., among others. His output includes works for orchestra, wind ensemble, percussion, brass band, chamber orchestra, film, and a wide variety of chamber ensembles and solo instruments. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Composition at James Madison University, and was previously a graduate teaching fellow at the University of Southern California.
Louis Karchin is an American composer, conductor and educator who has composed over 90 works including unaccompanied and chamber music, symphonic works and opera.
Eugene O'Brien is an American composer who has been a member of the faculty at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 1987. He was chair of the Composition Department from 1994 to 1999, and is currently executive associate dean. He has been a member of the composition faculties at Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
David Froom was an American composer and college professor. Froom taught at the University of Utah, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Maryland, College Park, and he was on the faculty at St. Mary's College of Maryland from 1989 until his death in 2022. He has received awards and honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters,, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Barlow Foundation, and was a five-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the State of Maryland.
Sean Friar is an American composer and pianist. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
Carl Schimmel is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He has been awarded the Joseph H. Bearns Prize from Columbia University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation of Harvard University, a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and other honors. An album of his compositions, Roadshow, was released in 2017.
Jeffrey Hass is a contemporary American classical composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. He is best known for his compositions combining electronic soundtracks with solo instruments or with large ensembles such as wind ensemble and orchestra. He currently serves the Jacobs School of Music as professor emeritus.
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