April 27, 2006

Knussen wins Nemmers Prize in Composition

By Judy Moore

The School of Music has announced that British composer Oliver Knussen is the 2006 winner of the $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition.

The biennial award honors classical music composers of outstanding achievement who have significantly affected the field of composition. The inaugural winner in 2004 was John Adams.

Knussen was cited for “his uniquely focused, vibrantly varied music and his total embrace — as a profoundly influential composer, conductor and educator — of today’s musical culture.”

As winner of the 2006 Nemmers Prize, Knussen receives a cash award of $100,000 and a performance of one of his works by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the 2007-08 season. He also will serve a residency at the School of Music.

School of Music Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery said, “Oliver Knussen has impacted the field of composition from almost every perspective. His compositional output shows the highest standards of imagination and creativity, and he has passionately championed the cause of new music as a mentor and conductor.”

Born in Glasgow in 1952, Oliver Knussen has lived most of his life near London, where his father was for many years the principal double bassist of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). It was with the LSO that Knussen made his conducting debut at age 16, leading his own “First Symphony” (1966-67).

He began composition lessons with John Lambert, later studying in the United States at Tanglewood Music Center in Boston with Gunther Schuller. It was during these early years that he composed a series of works which have been added to the repertory of ensembles all over the world: the Second Symphony (Margaret Grant Prize, Tanglewood, 1971), “Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh,” “Océan de Terre” and “Ophelia Dances, Book 1” (Koussevitzky centennial commission, 1975).

He returned to the United Kingdom in 1975 and began producing a sequence of works that have placed him firmly in the forefront of contemporary British music: “Trumpets” (1975), the “Triptych” (“Autumnal,” “Cantata” and “Sonya's Lullaby” 1975-77), “Coursing” (1979) and the “Third Symphony” (1973-79).