Augusta Read Thomas facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Augusta Read Thomas
|
|
|---|---|
Augusta Thomas in 2020
|
|
| Born | April 24, 1964 Glen Cove, New York, U.S.
|
| Occupation | Composer |
| Spouse(s) |
Bernard Rands
(m. 1994) |
Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is a famous American composer. She writes music for orchestras, choirs, and many different instruments. She is a professor at the University of Chicago, where she also leads a center for new music.
About Augusta Read Thomas
Augusta Read Thomas learned to compose music from many great teachers. She studied at places like the Tanglewood Music Center and Yale University. She also attended the Royal Academy of Music in London.
From 1997 to 2006, she was the Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This means she worked closely with the orchestra, writing new music for them. Her piece Astral Canticle was even a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2007. During her time there, she created nine new orchestral works. She also helped start a concert series called MusicNOW.
Augusta Read Thomas is a very respected person in American music. She has been asked to write music for many groups. These include the Santa Fe Opera, the Boston Symphony, and the BBC Proms. She has also written for dance companies and various music groups around the world.
Early Life and Studies
Augusta Read Thomas was born in 1964 in Glen Cove, New York. She showed great talent for music from a young age.
In 1989, when she was just 23, she received a special award called a Guggenheim Fellowship. This award helps talented people work on their creative projects. She was the youngest woman to receive this honor at that time. In 2004, she was also made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. This is a high honor from the school where she studied.
Her Career in Music
After her Guggenheim Fellowship, Augusta Read Thomas began teaching music. She taught at the Eastman School of Music.
In 2010, she became a University Professor at the University of Chicago. She teaches composition, which is the art of writing music. In 2018, she started the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC) at the university. This center helps create and perform new music.
In 2016, Augusta Read Thomas helped organize a big music event called the Ear Taxi Festival. This festival featured over 350 musicians and 88 composers. It included 54 brand new pieces of music. The festival was a huge success in Chicago. Because of this, Chicago magazine named her "Chicagoan of the Year."
More recently, she wrote an opera called Sweet Potato Kicks the Sun. This opera was first performed at the Santa Fe Opera in 2019.
