Steven Stucky, American classical music composer, Died at 66

  Music

Steven Stucky was born on November 7, 1949, and died on February 14, 2016.

He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.

Steven attended Baylor University and Cornell.

His major composition teachers were Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, and Karel Husa; his principal conducting teacher was Daniel Sternberg.

Stucky has written selected works for many of the major American orchestras, including Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and St. Paul.

Steven was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was the resident composer 1988–2009 (the longest such affiliation in American orchestral history), Stucky was host of the New York Philharmonic’s Hear &amp, Now series 2005 to 09, and he was Pittsburgh Symphony Composer of the Year for the 2011 to 12 season.

And also for Pittsburgh, he had composed Silent Spring, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s epochal book of the same title.

Steven Stucky teamed with the renowned pianist and author Jeremy Denk to create his first opera, The Classical Style (based on the celebrated book by Charles Rosen), which premiered in June 2014 at the Ojai Music Festival.

Amongst his other outstanding compositions are the symphonic poem Radical Light (2007), Rhapsodies for Orchestra (2008), the oratorio August 4, 1964 (2008), a Symphony (2012), and his Second Concerto for Orchestra (2003), which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

He was a well known respected expert on the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski and author of the definitive 1981 study Lutoslawski and His Music, he was curator of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 2013 centenary celebration of that composer, titled Woven Words: Music Begins Where Words End.

Mr. struck was awarded the Foundation Professor of Composition at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

From 1997 until 2006, he founded Ensemble X and led it thru nine seasons, while at the same time he also was the guiding force behind the celebrated Green Umbrella series in Los Angeles.

He was a teacher at Eastman and Berkeley, the latter as Ernest Bloch Professor in 2003.

He achieved a few in teaching and conducting visits, in 2013 he became artist-faculty composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

During 2014, he became a Professor Emeritus at Cornell and joined the composition faculty at the Juilliard School.

Steven Stucky passed away at 66 yrs old due to a brain tumor.