Laura Schwendinger

Laura Elise Schwendinger (born January 26, 1962) was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin’s Berlin Prize. Biography Schwendinger was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize, and her opera Artemisia, is the winner of the 2023, American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Opera Award, the largest such award for vocal music in the US. Additionally, she is a recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship and fellowships from the Yaddo Colony, MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Conference Center. She is a Professor of Composition at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is also the Artistic Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Head of Composition. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, where she studied with Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson. Schwendinger has been invited to present her music to seminars at Harvard University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Juilliard School, the University of California at Berkeley Davis, University of California Los Angeles, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Royal Irish Academy o