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Students, Faculty + Alumni

American Academy of Arts and Letters recognizes YSM composers

Hannah Lash

The American Academy of Arts and Letters recently announced the seventeen recipients of this year's awards in music, which total $205,000. The winners were selected by a committee of Academy members: Yehudi Wyner (chairman), Martin Boykan, Martin Bresnick, Mario Davidovsky, Stephen Hartke, Stephen Jaffe, and Tobias Picker. The awards will be presented at the Academy's annual Ceremonial in May. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the Academy. 

YSM faculty member Hannah Lash '12 AD was one of two winners of the Charles Ives Fellowship. Lash, who is also a 2012 alumnus of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, will receive a $15,000 Fellowship was established when Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Charles Ives's music, which has empowered the Academy to give Ives awards in composition since 1970.

Current students Dylan Mattingly '17 MM and Liliya Ugay '17 MM were also recognized, as recipients of the Charles Ives Scholarships of $7500, given to composition students of great promise. In addition, the Lakond Award in music composition was awarded to Chia-Yu Hsu '02 MM. The award of $10,000 was established through a bequest from Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond.

About the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 to “foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts.” Each year, the Academy honors over 50 composers, artists, architects, and writers with cash awards ranging from $5000 to $100,000. Other activities of the Academy are exhibitions of art, architecture, and manuscripts. and readings of new musicals.

Yale alum Yehudi Wyner was recently elected president of the Academy.

STORY

About the Recipients

Hannah Lash
Hailed by the New York Times as “striking and resourceful…handsomely brooding,” the music of Hannah Lash has been performed worldwide with commissions from The Fromm Foundation, The Naumburg Foundation, The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Orchestra of the Swan, and Talujon Percussion. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize, the Barnard Rogers Prize, and the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in composition. Lash earned her Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University and Alfred University, and currently serves on the composition faculty at the Yale School of Music.

Dylan Mattingly
Called “visionary magic” by Susan Scheid, the work of composer Dylan Mattingly is fundamentally ecstatic, committed to the extremes of human emotion, and draws from influences such as Olivier Messiaen, Joni Mitchell, and the microtonal folk singing of Polynesian choirs. Mattingly is the founding co-artistic director of Contemporaneous, a NYC-based ensemble of 21 musicians devoted to bringing to life the music of now. Among the ensembles and performers who have commissioned Mattingly are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, the Del Sol String Quartet, John Adams, and Marin Alsop. Mattingly holds a B.A. in classics and a B.M. in music composition from Bard College, and currently attends the Yale School of Music where he studies with David Lang and Martin Bresnick.

Liliya Ugay
Liliya Ugay is an award-winning composer and pianist who has won the Edward Grieg International Composers Competition, the MTNA Young Artist Composition Competition, the Pre-art International Composition Competition (Switzerland), the Crystal Camerton International Composition Competition (Moscow Conservatory/Union of Composers of Russia), and the 14th International Beethoven Piano Sonatas Competition. Her compositions range from traditional classical ensembles to musical theater and electronic music. Ugay’s works have been featured at the 45th Darmstadt New Music Summer Festival and the 52nd Venice Biennale. Originally from Uzbekistan, she came to the United States as a Woodruff Scholarship recipient at Columbus State University where she studied piano with Alexander Kobrin and composition with Fred Cohen. Currently she is studying at the Yale School of Music with Aaron Kernis, Martin Bresnick, and Christopher Theofanidis.

Chia-Yu Hsu
Born in Taiwan, Chia-Yu Hsu won the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Awards, a 2013 IAWM Search for New Music prize, a Copland House Residency Award, the Sorel Organization’s 2nd International Composition Competition, the 7th USA International Harp Composition Competition, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Maxfield Parrish Composition Contest, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Awards, a Brown Foundation Fellowship, and a Camargo Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Nashville Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan, the Aspen Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, Ciompi Quartet, and Prism Quartet. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University, Master of Music from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute.