Daugherty Receives duPont Award

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(March 2007)

Composer Michael Daugherty has been named the 2007 recipient of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s Alfred I. duPont Award which is presented to "a distinguished American composer, who has made a significant contribution in the field of contemporary orchestral music." The award is traditionally presented annually on Educators' Night, when area teachers are invited to attend the concert in recognition of their service to Delaware's young people. Previous recipients of this prestigious honor include Joan Tower, Richard Wernick, George Walker, and Boosey & Hawkes composer Christopher Rouse.

Michael Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American composers on the concert music scene today. Hailed by The Times (London) as “a master icon maker” with a “maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear”, he first came to international attention in the 1990s with a series of witty, dark-humored, brilliantly-scored pieces inspired by 20th-century pop-culture phenomena. His idiom bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas (1972-76) and Manhattan School of Music (1976-78 computer music at Boulez's IRCAM in Paris (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University in 1986 where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands. During this time he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84). After teaching music composition from 1986-1990 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition. He has been the Composer-in-Residence with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra (2000), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999-2003), Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-2002), Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2001-04), Westshore Symphony Orchestra (2005-06), Eugene Symphony (2006), and the Henry Mancini Institute (2006).

Daugherty’s music, rich with cultural and political allusions, has been performed around the world. His orchestral work entitled Ghost Ranch, inspired by the artwork of Georgia O’Keefe, received its world premiere in February of 2006 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Marin Alsop, with its US premiere by the West Shore Symphony in Muskegon, Michigan (May 2006). Bay of Pigs, commissioned by Music Accord for classical guitarist Manuel Barrueco, was premiered with the string quartet "Cuarteto Latinoamericano" in Patras, Greece for the Patras-European Capital of Culture in July 2006, with subsequent performances in Germany, Spain, California, Maryland, Michigan, and at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

His opera Jackie-O was premiered with the Houston Grand Opera under Christopher Larkin in 1997, which resulted in a full studio recording produced and released by the HGO. Jackie-O received a recent performance in March of 2006 with the University of Michigan Opera Theatre. Ladder to the Moon, for solo violin, wind octet, double bass, and percussion, was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and premiered in May of 2006, with violinist Ida Kavafian.

March 2007 marked the world premiere of Daugherty’s piano concerto, entitled Deus Ex Machina, from the Latin "god from the machine." Commissioned by a consortium of orchestras - Charlotte Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Memphis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Syracuse Symphony - the piece received its world premiere with pianist Terrance Wilson in Charlotte, North Carolina, and will travel around the eastern United States this year. Daugherty was recently named by the Delaware Symphony Orchestra as the winner of the A. I. duPont Award and was also named 'Outstanding Classical Composer' at the 2007 Detroit Music Awards.

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