Augusta Read Thomas

Augusta Read Thomas is University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College. From 1997 through 2006, she was the Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her music is played around the world, and her many awards include recognition from the Siemens Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2007, her Astral Canticle was one of the two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2009, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, considered to be the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States.