Augusta Read Thomasaus modern

Augusta Read Thomas (* 24 April 1964 in Glen Cove/New York) is an American composer and music educator.

Life

Thomas was born in 1964 in Glen Cove, New York. She is one of 10 children of James A. and Susan N. Thomas (née Norton). Her mother was a kindergarten teacher for 30 years at the Green Vale School. Augusta attended St. Paul’s School, a boarding high school in Concord, New Hampshire. She began piano lessons at the age of 4, and her teacher often assigned her small composition projects on the side; Thomas has said that these small projects sparked her interest in composition. She took up trumpet in third grade.

After graduating from high school, Thomas enrolled as a music student (specializing in trumpet performance) at Northwestern University in 1983. Northwestern’s composition program is prominent today, but did not exist when Thomas was an undergraduate. An exception was made for her to pursue composition. Thomas studied with faculty members and composers Alan Stout and M. William Karlins.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern, Thomas attended Yale University to pursue a master’s degree in composition. There she studied with Jacob Druckman. Thomas did not complete a degree program at Yale, finishing her master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London. There, she studied with Paul Patterson, the Manson Chair of Composition Faculty. Seven years after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London, Thomas was elected one of its Associates (ARAM, honorary degree), and in 2004 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music . In 1998, she received the Distinguished Alumni Association Award from St. Paul’s School. In 1999, she won the Award of Merit from the President of Northwestern University, and a year later received Northwestern’s Alumnae Award.

Immediately after receiving her degree from the Royal Academy of Music, Thomas was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989. At 23, she was the youngest woman recipient of the honor at the time.

In 1994, Thomas married the British composer Bernard Rands. In 1997, Russian-American cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered cello concerti by both Thomas and Rands in Boston Symphony Hall and at Carnegie Hall. Paul Griffiths wrote that Thomas “had led the way, introducing to Mr. Rostropovich. Then, when the Boston Symphony asked Mr. Rostropovich what he would like for his 70th birthday, he said he wanted a new concerto, and wanted it from Mr. Rands”.

Shortly after the completion of her Guggenheim Fellowship, Thomas began teaching at the Eastman School of Music. She received tenure there at age 33. While at Eastman, she was appointed Mead Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by conductors Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim. She is the longest-serving Mead Composer in Residence, holding the position from 1997 to 2006. Her residency culminated in the 2007 premier of her work Astral Canticle, one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Shortly after receiving tenure at Eastman, Thomas returned to Chicago to teach at the Northwestern University School of Music until 2008.

In 2010, the University of Chicago announced that Thomas would be appointed University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College. She is the 16th designated professor to be appointed by the University. In 2018, it was announced that Thomas had created the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC) at the University of Chicago. The CCCC includes the Grossman Ensemble, underwritten by the Sanford J. Grossman Charitable Trust, which was designed to extend the legacy of the Contemporary Chamber Players. Thomas said she “hoped to enrich the university’s long and distinguished history in contemporary music” with the CCCC, which is in its third season.

In 2016, Thomas created and co-curated the Ear Taxi Festival, which featured over 350 musicians, 88 composers, and 54 world premieres. The two-day festival took place in Chicago and was meant to celebrate the city’s “vibrant and booming contemporary classical music scene”. The festival’s success earned Thomas the title “Chicagoan of the Year” from Chicago magazine, and is set to return to the city in the future.

For the 2014–15 academic year, Thomas was a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar. She was MUSICALIVE Composer-in-Residence with the New Haven Symphony, a national residency program of The League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer.

Thomas’s most recent works include an opera, Sweet Potato Kicks the Sun, that premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2019. The opera is meant for audiences of all ages and stars professional beatboxer Nicole Paris. Thomas co-wrote the piece with Leslie Dunton-Downer, a longtime collaborator of hers and a published writer and librettist. There are plans for the opera to tour the United States in the near future.

Thomas’s chamber opera LIGEIA, based on Poe’s short story of the same title, received the International Orpheus Prize and was performed in Spoleto, Italy. Commissioned by Mstislav Rostropovich and Rencontres Musicales d’Evian, LIGEIA was premiered by Rostropovich at the 1994 Evian Festival. The American premiere took place at the Aspen Music Festival on July 27, 1995.

Thomas lives in Chicago with her husband, teaches at the University of Chicago, directs the Center for Contemporary Composition, and composes.

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