2009-2010

James Lee III was born in St. Joseph, Michigan and completed a bachelor’s degree in piano, and a masters and doctorate degree in composition from the University of Michigan. Some of his primary teachers included William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, and Michael Daugherty. In 2002 James Lee III was a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, MA, studying with Steven Mackey, Michael Gandolfi, Kaija Saariaho, and conducting with Stefan Asbury. During that summer, “Psalm 61” was premiered by members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Other works by Dr. Lee have been premiered in Michigan, Maryland, California, Indiana, Alabama, Minnesota, South Africa, Austria, and Japan. In October 2006, Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra premiered “Beyond Rivers of Vision” in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Dr. Lee’s trio “Into Sonic Horizons” was premiered at Morgan State University in February 2007, during a faculty recital that was greeted with success.

2008-2009

George Theophilus Walker was born in Washington, D.C. June 27, 1922 of West Indian-American parentage.  His father emigrated to the United States, where he became a physician after graduating from Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia.  George Walker’s mother, Rosa King, supervised her son’s first piano lessons that began when he was five years of age. His first teacher was Miss Mary L. Henry. Mrs. Lillian Mitchell Allen, who had earned a doctorate in music education, became his second piano teacher.
Before graduating from Dunbar High School at age 14, George Walker was presented in his first public recital at age 14 at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.  He was admitted to Oberlin College as a scholarship student in 1937 where he studied piano with David Moyer and organ with Arthur Poister.  In 1939, he became the organist for the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College.
Graduating at 18 from Oberlin College with the highest honors in his Conservatory class, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music to study piano with Rudolf Serkin, chamber music with William Primrose and Gregor Piatigorsky, and composition with Rosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber.  He graduated from the Curtis Institute with Artist Diplomas in piano and composition in 1945, becoming the first black graduate of this renown music school.
George Walker was presented in a debut recital in Town Hall, New York by Mr. and Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist.  With his “notable” debut, as it was described by the New York Times, he became the first black instrumentalist to perform in that hall.  As the winner of the Philadelphia Youth Auditions, he played the 3rd Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff with the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy conducting two weeks after his New York debut in November of 1945.  He was the first black instrumentalist to appear with this orchestra.  The following year, he played the 2nd Piano Concerto of Brahms with the Baltimore Symphony, Reginald Stewart conducting and the 4th Beethoven Concerto with Dean Dixon and his orchestra.  In 1946 George Walker composed his String Quartet no. 1. The second movement of this work, entitled, Lyric for Strings, has become the most frequently performed orchestral work by a living American composer. In 1950, George Walker became the first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists.  In 1954, he made an unprecedented tour of seven European countries, playing in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England in the major cities of Stockholm, Copenhagen, The Hague, Amsterdam, Frankfurt a Main, Lausanne, Berne, Milan and London with great acclaim.
Upon returning to the United States, he taught at Dillard University in New Orleans for one year before entering the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Program at the Eastman School of Music in 1955.  In 1956, he became the first black recipient of a doctoral degree from that institution as well as an Artist Diploma in Piano.  George Walker was awarded both a Fulbright Fellowship and a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1957.  He was the first composer to receive the Whitney award.  He spent two years in Paris where he had composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger.  In 1959, he embarked upon another tour, playing concerts in France, Holland and Italy.  After a recital in London in Wigmore Hall in 1963 that was sponsored by Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist, he received an honorary membership in the Frederic Chopin Society there.
George Walker’s distinguished career as a teacher continued in 1960 with faculty appointments to the Dalcroze School of Music, The New School for Social Research, where he introduced a course in Aesthetics, Smith College (1961-68) (where he became the first black tenured faculty member), the University of Colorado (1968-69 as Visiting Professor), Rutgers University (1969-92, where he was Chairman of the Music Department), Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (1975-78) and the University of Delaware (1975-76, where he was the recipient of the first Minority Chair established by the University).
George Walker has published over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus.  His works have been performed by virtually every major orchestra in the United States and by many in England and other countries.  His awards include the Harvey Gaul Prize, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Bennington Composer Conference Fellowships, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Fellowships, a Fromm Foundation commission, two Koussevitsky Awards, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Award, the Mason Gross Memorial Award, numerous grants from the Research Councils of Smith College, The University of Colorado, Rutgers University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts.  He has received two Alumni Awards from the Eastman School of Music, the University Medal from the University of Rochester (1996), honorary doctorate degrees from Lafayette College (1982), Oberlin College (1983), Montclair State University, Bloomfield College, Curtis Institute of Music (1996) and Spelman College (2001).
George Walker has received important commissions from many ensembles that include the New York Philharmonic (Cello Concerto), the Cleveland Orchestra (Dialogus for Cello and Orchestra), the Boston Symphony (Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra), the Eastman School of Music (An Eastman Overture) , the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2), the David Ensemble (Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands), Affiliate Artists and Xerox (Guido’s Hand), the Pew Charitable Trust (Piano Sonata No. 4), The Boys Choir of Harlem (Cantata), The Cleveland Chamber Symphony (Orpheus), New Jersey Symphony (Pageant and Proclamation), the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust (Modus), the New Jersey Chamber Music Society (Wind Set), Maryland International Piano Competition (Bauble), Columbus Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra (Tangents), New Jersey Youth Symphony (Icarus In Orbit), and the Network for New Music (Abu). In 2005 George Walker was commissioned by the Las Vegas Philharmonic to compose a work to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Las Vegas. This work is entitled, Hoopla (A Touch of Glee). Also in 2005., he completed a second commission from the Eastman School of Music with Foils (Homage to Saint George ) for Orchestra. The New York Philharmonic also premiered (In Praise of Folly) (1981) that was televised nationally on the PBS program, “Great Performances”.  His compositions have been recorded for CBS, Mastersound, Desto, C.R.I., Serenus, Da Camera Magna, BIS, Orion, Mercury, GM and Albany Records.  Some of the major conductors who have performed the music of George Walker include, Andrey Boreyko, Andrew Davis, Comissiona, DePriest, Jarvi, Levi, Maazel, Mata, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rostropovitch, Robert Shaw, Joseph Silverstein, Skrowaczewski, Slatkin, Hugh Wolf, and Zinman.

In 1996, George Walker became the first black composer to receive the coveted Pulitzer Prize In Music for his work, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, premiered by the Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conducting.  In 1997 Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC proclaimed June 17th as George Walker Day in the nation’s capitol. In 1998, he received the Composers Award from the Lancaster Symphony and the letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for “his significant contributions to the field of contemporary American Music.”  In 1999, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In April 2000, George Walker was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
He also received in May the Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award for 2000 from the Harlem School School of Arts. In March of 2001, the Detroit Symphony awarded him their first annual Classical Roots Award for a lifetime of achievement in American Music. George Walker has been awarded the annual A.I Dupont Award presented by the Delaware Symphony for 2002. In 2003 he was selected for inclusion in the Washington Music Hall of Fame (Washington, DC). In 2005 George Walker was named Honorary President of Ebb and Flow Arts in Maui, Hawaii. A Proclamation from the Borough President of Brooklyn, NY designated April 6, 2005 as ” A Celebration for Dr. George Walker.” In January of 2007 George Walker received the annual Legacy Award from the National Opera Association.

2007-2008

David Nathaniel Baker, Jr. was born December 21, 1931 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is Distinguished Professor of Music and Chairman of the Jazz Department at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as conductor and artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. A virtuoso performer on multiple instruments and top in his field in several disciplines, Mr. Baker has taught and performed throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He is also the conductor and musical & artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. A 1973 Pulitzer Prize nominee, Mr. Baker was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1979, and has been honored three times by Down Beat magazine—as a trombonist, for lifetime achievement, and as the third inductee to their Jazz Education Hall of Fame.

Mr. Baker has received numerous awards, including the National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award (1981), President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching from Indiana University (1986), the Arts Midwest Jazz Masters Award (1990), the Governor’s Arts Award of the State of Indiana (1991), the Indiana Historical Society’s Living Legend Award (2001), the James Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution (2002), the American Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts (2000), and an Emmy Award (2003) for his musical score for the PBS documentary For Gold and Glory. He has received honorary doctorates from Wabash College, Oberlin College, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2007 he will be honored by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with their Living Jazz Legend Award. He has served a number of times on the Pulitzer Prize Music Jury and is Chair of the Jazz Faculty of the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, IL. He has more than 65 recordings, 60 books, and 400 articles to his credit.

2006-2007

Composer Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974; Flint, MI) has been hailed as “...a craftsman with an ear for effective orchestration, a fine theatrical sense and real skill when it comes to formal layout.” His works have been commissioned and performed by numerous ensembles, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte (NC), Chicago Civic, Chicago Youth, Cleveland, Detroit, Florida Philharmonic, Indianapolis, Minnesota, National, Philadelphia, San Antonio, St. Louis, Stamford and South Bend Symphony Orchestras, as well as Alea III, Auros Group for New Music, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Curtis Opera Theater, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies (MN), Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Orchestra 2001, Orchestral Society of Philadelphia, Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota, WAMSO - Minnesota Orchestra Volunteer Association, and soloists Ignat Solzhenytsin, Demarre McGill and soprano Caprice Corona.

He has received awards and honors from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, American Music Center, American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, the Presser Foundation, Boston Conservatory, Austin Peay State University and Harvard University. Past associations include serving as Composer-in-Residence for the Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota (currently known as Vocal Essence) and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has also served as Composer-in-Residence with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra as part of the Music Alive Residency program, sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer. The residency included the premiere of a newly commissioned work for their family concerts, as well as Holland’s “Actions Rendered: Interpretations of Pollock for Three Orchestras,” which is based on the paintings of Jackson Pollock. As an advocate for music education, many of Holland’s residencies have included visits to schools, libraries, churches and civic groups, where he has given presentations about the art of composition. His catalog of compositions includes a number of educational works that have been performed frequently by several orchestras on family and young people’s concerts.

His recent projects include a work for the Detroit Symphony to celebrate the opening of the new Max M. Fisher Music Center, and a work for the Cincinnati Symphony in celebration of the opening of the Freedom Center National Underground Railroad Museum. Upcoming for 2005-2006 include the premiere a ballet commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Holland received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. His teachers have included Ned Rorem, Bernard Rands, Mario Davidovsky and Yehudi Wyner. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

2002-2003

Perkinson graduated from New York City’s High School for Music and the Arts in 1949, one year after his choral composition “And Behold” won a school competition. He studied at Manhattan School of Music, receiving his master’s degree in composition in 1954. Perkinson played jazz piano for a while, including a year with the Max Roach Quartet from 1964-‘65. Immediately afterwards he co-founded the Symphony of the New World. He served as its associate conductor until 1970 and as acting music director in 1972-‘73.

Perkinson’s principal concentration was on classical music, having written compositions performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, and various other performers. He was popular as a guest conductor for symphonies worldwide. But he also loved more popular music and wrote brilliant arrangements for Marvin Gaye, Harry Belafonte and Donald Byrd. Perkinson composed and arranged scores for television and films, including Sidney Poitier’s “A Warm December” in 1972. He was composer-in-residence and musical director for a number of companies: Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, American Theatre Lab, Negro Ensemble Company, and others.

From 1998 until his death, Perkinson was Artistic Director of the Performance Program at Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. He was the artistic advisor to Ensemble Stop-Time, a grant-funded group which explored the common ground between jazz, gospel and other black vernacular musics. From 1999 on, he was conductor and music director for the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble. In 2001, he conducted the world premiere of the opera “Doxology: The Doxy Canticles”, by librettist Paul Carter Harrison and jazz clarinetist Wendell Logan. At the time of his death Perkinson was serving as composer-in-residence for Jacksonville, Florida’s Ritz Chamber Players.

Composer, pianist and conductor Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, one of the most respected African-Americans in the classical music community, died of cancer on March 9, 2004. He was 72 years old.

2002-2003

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Alvin Singleton attended New York University and Yale. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied with Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. After working for more than a decade in Europe, Singleton returned to the United States to become Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (1985-88). He subsequently served as Resident Composer at Spelman College in Atlanta (1988-91), and was the 1996-1997 UNISYS Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In addition, he served as a Visiting Professor of Composition at the Yale University School of Music.

He has been awarded the Kranischsteiner Musikpreis by the City of Darmstadt, Germany, twice the Musikprotokoll Kompositionpreis by the Austrian Radio, the Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts Award by the City of Atlanta, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Singleton has composed music for the theater, orchestra, solo instruments, and a variety of chamber ensembles. His compositions have been performed by the symphony orchestras of Boston, Pittsburgh, Houston, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Oregon, Baltimore, Syracuse, Louisville, and Florida, the American Composers Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de Paris, das Gürzenich-Orchester Kölner Philharmoniker and also the Kronos Quartet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Nash Ensemble of London, the Asko Ensemble of Amsterdam, Ensemble des 20. Jahrhunderts of Vienna, the London Sinfonietta, Trio Basso of Cologne, and das Bremer Tanztheater.

Important international festivals have also programmed Singleton’s music. They include Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, Tanglewood, Aspen, Bravo! Colorado, Music for Angel Fire in New Mexico, Cincinnati May Festival, Cabrillo Music Festival, Bang On A Can, the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Other Minds in San Francisco, the Vienna Summer Music Festival, Pro Musica Nova in Bremen, the Styrian Autumn Festival in Graz, the Brussels ISCM World Music Days, and IRCAM in Paris.

2003-2004

Composer and College Professor Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork, born April 17th, 1941 in Rochester, New York, began his musical studies with piano lessons as a child. He studied at Howard University (B.Mus., 1963) and Manhattan School of Music (B.Mus. in Composition, 1965, M.Mus. in Composition, 1966), spending the summer of 1963 at the American Institute at Fontainebleau, France. After service in the U.S. Armed Forces in Germany (1966-1968), he returned to the United States and pursued his doctorate degree at Michigan State University in Lansing (Ph.D., 1971). He also attended the Electronic Music Institution at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (summer, 1972) and the Seminar on Contemporary Music (summer, 1978) at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His principal teachers were H. Owen Reed (Michigan State University), Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond (Manhattan School of Music), Mark Fax (Howard University) and Nadia Boulanger (American Institute at Fontainebleau).

His career as a teacher includes graduate assistantships at Michigan State University (1969-1971), and professorships at Youngstown State University in Ohio (1971-1977), Norfolk State University in Virginia (1977-2000), and Old Dominion University, also in Norfolk, Virginia (2000- present), where he is Eminent Scholar and Professor of Music.

Dr. Hailstork began writing music at an early age. His musical-comedy, The Race for Space, was performed at Howard University during his senior year in college (1963), and his master’s thesis, Statement, Variations and Fugue, was performed by the Baltimore Symphony in 1966. Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles: symphonic works and tone poems for orchestra; a piano concerto; numerous chamber works; duos for such combinations as horn and piano, clarinet and piano, flute and piano, and others; a large number of songs including songs for soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano, some with piano and others with orchestra or chamber group; band works and band transcriptions, and many pieces for piano.

Among his compositions are Celebration, which, in 1976, was recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Out of the Depths, which won the 1977 Belwin-Mills Max Winkler Award presented by the Band Directors National Association; American Guernica, awarded first prize in a national contest sponsored by the Virginia College Band Directors in 1983; and Mourn Not the Dead which received the 1971 Ernest Bloch Award for choral composition. In 1995, the chamber work, Consort Piece, was awarded First Prize by the University of Delaware Festival of Contemporary Music.

In 1990, a consortium of five orchestras commissioned a piano concerto which was premiered by Leon Bates in 1992. In addition, Dr. Hailstork was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music to write Festival Music for the Baltimore Symphony. Other significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago and New York) have been led by leading conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Daniel Barenboim and Kurt Masur. In 1999, the composer’s second symphony (commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra), and his second opera, Joshua’s Boots (commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Kansas City Lyric Opera), were premiered. In 2002, James Conlon conducted Hailstork’s oratorio Done Made My Vow at the renowned Cincinnati May Festival. During the summer of 2003, Dr. Hailstork was Visiting Artist at the Walden School for young composers. A CD of Hailstork’s Symphonies No. 2 and 3, recorded by David Lockington with the Grand Rapids Symphony, will be released during the 2004-2005 season.

2004-2005

Tania León is a vital new music personality, highly regarded as a composer and conductor and recognized for her accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations. Her work is, according to the French newspaper Tribune de Genève, “Aboundingly earthy, rhythmic, and embellished by deeply moving nostalgia, [standing] at the crossroads of every musical emotion.” Born in Havana, Cuba, León came to the United States in 1967. At the invitation of Arthur Mitchell, she became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem in 1969, establishing the Dance Theater’s music department, music school, and orchestra. She instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series in 1978. From 1993 to 1997 she was the New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic and she served as Latin American Music Advisor to the American Composers Orchestra until 2001. León has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, NYSCA, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer, among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome; she has also been a resident at Yaddo (supported by a MacArthur Foundation Award), and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. León was the recipient in 2000 of the Tow Award at Brooklyn College, where she is professor of Music. She received an Honorary Doctorate degree from Colgate University in 1999. She has held master classes at the Hamburg Musikschule in Germany, and has been Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University and Visiting Professor of Composition at Yale University. As the Boston Phoenix called it, León’s music is “…art of the highest order. [It] doesn’t appropriate folk roots so much as radically inspire us to refigure what those roots are.”

2005-2006

T.J. Anderson is one of the leading composers of his generation. He was born August 17, 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and received degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and a Ph.D in Composition from the University of Iowa. He also holds several honorary degrees. After serving as Chairman of the Department of Music at Tufts University for eight years, Thomas Jefferson Anderson became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music and in 1990 became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. He now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he devotes full time to writing music.

He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. Anderson is well known for his orchestration of Scott Joplin’s opera, Treemonisha which premiered in Atlanta in 1972. His first opera, Soldier Boy, Soldier based on a libretto by Leon Forrest, was commissioned by Indiana University. The opera, Walker was commissioned by the Boston Athenaeum with a libretto by Derek Walcott and Slip Knot, commissioned by the School of Music, Northwestern University is based on a historical paper by T.H. Breen with libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa.

Mark DeVoto, in program notes for a concert of T.J. Anderson’s music honoring the 100th year of Tufts University’s Department of Music, says: “T.J. Anderson, as all the world knows him, has spent a long and distinguished career composing music reflecting a global awareness of human experience in the twentieth century, synthesizing Eastern and Western classical traditions with the Black experience in America. His works reveal inspiration from a variety of classical styles ranging from Purcell to Alban Berg, and techniques and forms ranging from the serially rigorous to the freely improvisatory, all arrayed in a stylistic panorama that is wholly “his own”. Elliott Schwartz states, “Many African-American composers of “classical” music are confronted by a unique set of experiences – influences from two worlds, so to speak. Thomas Jefferson Anderson has successfully balanced both; his music speaks to, and draws from, the heritage of European Art Music and the culture of Black America.” (Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs, ed: Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, 1998) “T.J.Anderson has characterized his role as a composer as that of a musical anthropologist, that is a documentor, interpreter, and re-creator of culture” (Greg A. Steinke: International Dictionary of Black Composers, 1999)

T.J. Anderson takes pride in collaborations with his distinguished friends Leon Forrest, writer and Richard Hunt, sculptor. A number of his works have been premiered in the artist’s studio. As a lecturer, consultant, and visiting composer, he has appeared in institutions in the United States, Brazil, Germany, France, and Switzerland. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Foundation, the National Humanities Center(their first composer), and a scholar-in- residence at the Rockefeller Center for the Creative Arts, Bellagio, Italy. Anderson was singularly honored when Bruce Alfred Thompson devoted his Ph.D. dissertation at Indiana University to an analysis of his works. Other honors include an honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and a Rockefeller Center Foundation grant, Composer-in- Residence Program (with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw, Conductor). At his 60th birthday celebration at Harvard University, letters from Robert Shaw and Sir Michael Tippett were read. In March, 1997, he was honored as a founder and first president of the National Black Music Caucus with concert of his music.