Nancy Van de Vate
Nancy Van de Vate is one of the most recorded living composers of orchestral music in the world. 'Chernobyl' was nominated for the 1989 Koussevitsky International Recording Award as the best new work by a living composer in its first recording; her 1987 compact disc of orchestral music was nominated for the 1988 Ovation Classical Music Award as the best new recording in the orchestral category. In 1989, 1993, and 1997 Van de Vate was a nominator for the quadrennial Kyoto Prize in Music, the world's largest music award. Her orchestral music has gained numerous Pulitzer and Grawemeyer nominations. Her music has appears regularly on major international music festivals.
The major thrust of her compositional activities is now opera and musical theater. Her children's musical, 'Der Herrscher und das Maedchen', was premiered in Vienna in June, 1995 and recorded at the Vienna Music Academy in November, 1998. Her 45-minute chamber opera, 'In the Shadow of the Glen', was completed in 1994 and will be premiered on March 12 and 13, 1999 at the Longy School of Music in Boston. Her German-language opera in four acts, 'Nemo: Jenseits von Vulkania', was completed in 1995 and her opera in three acts, 'All Quiet on the Western Front', after the famous war novel by Erich Maria Remarque, was completed in 1998.
Van de Vate has received commissions and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, Austrian Foreign Ministry, City of Vienna, American Association of University Women, and other organizations. She has been a Resident Fellow at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and Ossabaw Island in the US; and at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Annaghmakerrig, Ireland), the Brahmshaus (Baden-Baden, Germany), and the Kuenstlerhaus (Boswil, Switzerland).
She has degrees from Wellesley College, University of Mississippi, and Florida State University, with post-doctoral work in electronic music at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire. She has taught at several universities, performed as violist in symphony orchestras, and performed as a solo and chamber pianist. She has contributed articles to Musical America, The International Musician, The Instrumentalist, Symphony News, and numerous other professional periodicals.
Ms. Van de Vate now lives in Vienna, Austria. In 1994, she received dual Austrian and American citizenship, a privilege only rarely allowed by the Austrian government, in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments as a composer.
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