Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Alex Dippold, Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No.17  June 5, 2000

Faculty Member Receives Guggenheim Fellowship James Matheson, a composer and lecturer in the School of Music, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the year 2000. He is one of 182 writers, painters, filmmakers, musicians, scholars, and scientists selected from over 2,900 applicants for this prestigious award, which is granted on the basis of distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Past Guggenheim fellows include Aaron Copland, Vladimir Nabokov, Linus Pauling, and James Watson. Guggenheim Fellowships are granted for a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 months. The purpose of the program is to provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. There are no special conditions, and fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary for their work. Matheson received a bachelor’s degree in music and philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1992. He continued his studies at Cornell University, where he received an M.F.A. in 1997 and where he is in the final stages of a doctoral program in composition. His principal composition teachers have included Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Gerald Levinson, Martin Bresnick, and Jacob Druckman. His music has been heard throughout the United States and abroad, including performances by Orchestra 2001 at concerts in Philadelphia and during the ensemble’s residency at the Moscow Conservatory. Matheson’s new piece for piano trio, Falling, was premiered in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s chamber music series in May. Gliss, a new orchestral work, was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for this year’s Whittaker New Music Reading Sessions, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Spin, a string quartet, in their chamber music series in May of last year. A recent work for solo piano, Pound, was recorded for CRI by Xak Bjerken and is scheduled for release later this year. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, Matheson has received several awards, including an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his violin concerto Sleep. The awards are granted to composers under 30 years of age whose works are selected through a national competition. At Ithaca College Matheson taught Analysis of 20th-Century Music. He previously taught at Hartwick College and the State University of New York at Binghamton.

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