Chamber Music Soc Awards Stoeger Prize

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has awarded its 2012-2013 Elise L. Stoeger Prize to Chinese composer Zhou Long, in recognition of his “significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition.”

 

The biannual award carries a $25,000 purse and a commission from the Society for a piece to be premiered in May of 2014.

 

Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han noted the composer’s “rich and diverse” catalog of chamber music. “Not only is his voice original and exacting, but his ability to synthesize Western and Eastern sensibilities is unsurpassed in our estimation.”  

 

Zhou Long, 60, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his opera Madame White Snake, a commission from the Beijing Music Festival. Along with Chen Yi, his wife, and Tan Dun, Zhou Long is among the generation of Chinese composers that persevered despite the Cultural Revolution. Following his graduation from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1983, Zhou Long attended Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards, receiving his PhD in 1993. He achieved U.S. citizenship in 1999 and is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.

The Stoeger Prize was established in 1987 with a bequest from longtime CMSLC subscriber Milan Stoeger in memory of his wife, Elise.  Past recipients have included Brett Dean and Chen Yi.