W&J to host Grammy-winning composer
Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar and Grammy-winning composer Augusta Read Thomas will present a lecture entitled “The A.R.T. of Composing” at 7:30 p.m. Monday in Room 100 of the Dieter-Porter Life Sciences Building on the Washington & Jefferson College campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The album “Colors of Love” by Chanticleer, featuring two of Thomas’s compositions, won a Grammy award in 2000. In 2007, her Astral Canticle was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her musical compositions comprise choral and chamber music, orchestral works, ballet and concertos, which have been commissioned and performed by leading orchestras, among them the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra.
A fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, Thomas is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the recipient of awards from the Siemens, Koussevitzky and Guggenheim foundations.