AUGUST 1999

Zwilich

COMPOSER OF THE YEAR IS ZWILICH

By Amy Welch
FSU Communications Group

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (B.M. '60, M.M. '62) has been named the 1999 Composer of the Year by Musical America, an international directory of the performing arts.
Zwilich, 60, has held the Carnegie Hall Composer's Chair since 1995. Her "String Quartet #2" premiered at Carnegie Hall in December. The piece is also being performed in music festivals in Aspen, Ravinia and Tanglewood this summer by the Emerson Quartet, for whom it was commissioned.
She earned her doctoral degree from The Juilliard School of Music.
Her works have been played by major orchestras in the United States and abroad.
Zwilich has won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in music and several other coveted music awards.
"I had the benefit of Florida State's wonderful faculty," Zwilich said. "The marvelous thing at Florida State was that everything I wrote was played immediately. That doesn't happen everywhere."

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