Donald Grantham

From Wind Repertory Project

Donald Grantham

Biography

Donald Grantham (born 9 November 1947 in Duncan, Oklahoma) is an American composer and educator. He is highly regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential composers for winds working today. Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony's Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three First Prizes in the NBA/William Revelli Competition, two First Prizes in the ABA/Ostwald Competition, and First Prize in the National Opera Association's Biennial Composition Competition. His music has been praised for its "elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism" in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In recent years his works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and he has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera. His music is published by Piquant Press, Peer-Southern, E. C. Schirmer and Mark Foster, and a number of his works have been commercially recorded. The composer resides in Austin, Texas and is Professor of Composition at the University of Texas at Austin. Along with Kent Kennan he is co-author of The Technique of Orchestration, published by Prentice-Hall.