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Laura Baich
IU School of Music
lbaich@indiana.edu
812-855-9846

Maria Talbert
IU School of Music
mtalbert@indiana.edu
812-856-5719

Last modified: Thursday, March 7, 2002

IU music professor receives national award

Indiana University School of Music composition professor Claude Baker has been selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters to receive a $7,500 Academy Award in Music. Baker was one of four composers chosen to receive this national award, which recognizes outstanding artistic achievement.

As part of the award, each composer will receive an additional $7,500 to help fund the recording of one work. The awards will be presented in May at the academy's annual ceremony.

Baker, an IU faculty member since 1988, earned his doctorate from the Eastman School of Music in 1975. He served as composer-in-residence for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1991 to 1999. His music has been performed by the orchestras of St. Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Louisville, as well as by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de Espaa, and Orquesta Sinfonica de RTV Espaola.

The winner of two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Baker also has been honored with Eastman-Leonard and George Eastman Prizes, a Manuel de Falla Prize, and BMI-SCA and ASCAP awards. He has earned grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Kentucky Arts Council and the New York State Council on the Arts. His works are published by MMB Music and Carl Fischer, and recorded on the Gasparo and Louisville First Edition labels. He is a former faculty member of the University of Georgia, the University of Louisville and the Eastman School of Music.

Founded in 1898, the 250-member American Academy of Arts and Letters each year honors more than 50 composers, artists, architects and writers with cash prizes from $2,500 to $75,000. Its other activities include exhibitions of art, manuscripts and architecture; publications on the academy's history and events; and performances and readings of new musicals.