Augusta Read Thomas

Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. Biography Thomas studied composition with Oliver Knussen at the Tanglewood Music Center; Jacob Druckman at Yale University; Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University; and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College in 1990–91 and a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 1991 to 1994. Thomas was the longest-serving Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, from 1997 to 2006. This residency culminated in the premiere of Astral Canticle for solo flute, solo violin, and orchestra, a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. During her residency, Thomas premiered nine commissioned orchestral works and helped establish the MusicNOW series. A former chairperson of the American Music Center, she is on many boards and, according to Wise Music Classical, “has become one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American music.” Commis