Laura Elise Schwendinger

Discipline: Composing

Based In: Madison, WI

Year at Millay: 1944

Awards/Honors: Fellow, Charles Ives Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY (2023); Artist-in-Residence, Copland House Residency, Copland House, Cortlandt, NY (2021); Fellow, MacDowell, Peterborough, NH (2021, 2018, 2015, 2011, 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000, 1997, 1996, 1994); Fellow, Music Composition, Guggenheim Fellowship, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY (2009); Fellow, Radcliffe Fellowship, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA (2002–2003); Fellow, Music, The Bogliasco Center, Bogliasco, Italy (2002); Fellow, Berlin Prize Fellowship, The American Academy in Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2000).

Website: https://www.lauraschwendinger.com/

Laura Elise Schwendinger, composer of Artemisia, winner of the 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Opera award, was the first composer to win the Berlin Prize. A Professor of music composition at University of Wisconsin-Madison, her works have been championed by Dawn Upshaw, Arditti & JACK Quartets, Jenny Koh, Janine Jansen, Matt Haimovitz, ICE, Eighth-Blackbird, Juilliard, ACO, Franz Liszt Orchestra; her music has been performed at the Kennedy & Lincoln Centers, Berlin Philharmonic, Wigmore, Carnegie Halls, Miller & Théâtre Châtelet, Tanglewood, Aspen & Ojai, Talis, & Bennington Festivals. Fellowships include a: Guggenheim, Fromm, Koussevitzky, Radcliffe Institute, Copland Prize-Copland House, ALEA III First Prize, American Academy Arts Letters, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco, and Bellagio Fellowships. Her music called “captivating, artful..moving” and  “music of infinite beauty” in The New York Times, “the genuine article…onto the season’s best list “ in the Boston Globe. A San Francisco Classical Voice review of her opera, “Artemisia is sumptuous on every level.” Recent premieres include her second opera, Cabaret of Shadows a (Fromm Commission) produced by Musiqa at MATCH, Houston, Nightingales for Eleanor Bartsch and Ariana Kim and the Dubuque & UW Symphony Orchestras, and a harp concerto, Second Sight for Atlanta Symphony Principal Harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson, commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the Emory University Orchestra program.