Shulamit Ran
Shulamit Ran, a native of Israel, began setting Hebrew poetry to music at the age of seven. By nine she was studying composition and piano with some of Israel's most noted musicians, including composers Alexander Boskovich and Paul Ben-Haim, and within a few years she was having her works performed by professional musicians and orchestras. As the recipient of scholarships from both the Mannes College of Music in New York and the America Israel Cultural Foundation, Ran continued her composition studies in the United States with Norman Dello-Joio. In 1973 she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she is now the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Music. She lists her late colleague and friend Ralph Shapey, with whom she also studied in 1977, as an important mentor.In addition to receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Ran has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, Chamber Music America, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, first prize in the Kennedy Center-Friedheim Awards competition for orchestral music, and many more. Her music has been played by leading orchestras including the Chicago Symphony under both Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph Von Dohnányi in two U.S. tours, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Gary Bertini, the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, the New York Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke's under the late Yehudi Menuhin, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Jerusalem Orchestra, and various others. Her chamber and solo works are regularly performed by leading ensembles in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Between 1990 and 1997 she was Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, having been appointed for that position by Maestro Daniel Barenboim as part of the Meet-The-Composer Orchestra Residencies Program. Between 1994 and 1997 she was also the fifth Brena and Lee Freeman Sr. Composer-in-Residence with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Recent compositional projects include works Credo/Ani Ma'amin for Chanticleer, "Song and Dance" for Network for New Music, a Clarinet Concerto for Clarinet Days 2008 in Israel, and Lyre of Orpheus for Concertante, the New York-based string sextet.
An elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American
Academy of Arts and Science, Shulamit Ran is the recipient of five honorary doctorates. Her works are published by Theodore Presser Company and by the Israeli Music Institute and recorded on more than a dozen different labels.