David Rakowski

From Wind Repertory Project

Biography

David Rakowski was born and grew up in St. Albans, Vermont. He studied with Robert Ceely and John Heiss at New England Conservatory, with Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard and Paul Lansky at Princeton, and with Luciano Berio at Tanglewood. He has received the Rome Prize, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2006 Barlow Prize, and the 2004-6 Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, BMI, Columbia University, the Orleans International Piano Competition, the International Horn Society, and various artist colonies. He has been commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the U.S. Marine Band, Sequitur, Network for New Music, Koussevitzky Music Foundation (with Ensemble 21 in 1996 and with Boston Modern Orchestra Project in 2006), Boston Musica Viva, the Fromm Foundation (twice), Dinosaur Annex, the Crosstown Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the Riverside Symphony, Parnassus, The Composers Ensemble, Alea II, Alea III, Triple Helix, and others. In 1999 his Persistent Memory, commissioned by Orpheus, was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and in 2002 his Ten of a Kind, commissioned by "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band, was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has been composer-in-residence at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Guest Composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference, and a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His music is published by C.F. Peters, is recorded on CRI, Innova, Americus, Albany, Capstone, and Bridge, and has been performed worldwide. He was a founder of the Griffin Music Ensemble of Boston, and has taught at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Universities, and at New England Conservatory. He is currently the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Composition at Brandeis, where he has taught since 1995. He lives in Massachusetts and Maine with his wife Beth Wiemann, and exactly two cats named Sunset and Camden.