Tyler White, professor of composition and conducting in the Glenn Korff School of Music, has been awarded the 2019-2020 American Prize in Composition for his orchestra work “A Brand-New Summer.”
Founded in 2009, the American Prize is a performing arts competition that provides cash awards, professional adjudication and regional, national and international recognition for the best recorded performances by ensembles and individuals each year in the U.S. at the professional, university, church, community, and secondary school levels.
White has been at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln since 1994. In addition to teaching at Nebraska, he is a composer-in-residence with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, White received his master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from Cornell University, where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winners Steven Stucky and Karel Husa. He has also studied at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau (France).
As a composer, he has received commissions from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra and numerous other organizations.
He has received awards and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, the Macdowell Colony, the Omaha Symphony and others.
In 2014, his opera “O Pioneers!” was one of eight finalists for The American Prize in composition in opera, theater and film.
In 2001, White was named composer of the year by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association. In 2003, White’s Elegy “for the orphans of terror” was awarded the Masterworks Prize and was recorded by the Sofia Philharmonic on the inaugural volume of ERMMedia’s “Masterworks of the New Era” CD series, and in 2006, his “Mystic Trumpeter (Symphony No. 2)” was awarded honorable mention in the ASCAP Foundation/Rudolf Nissim Prize competition.
