UA News

Composer Daniel Asia is one of the recipients of the 2010 Music Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Daniel Asia, a professor in the University of Arizona School of Music, has been named one of the recipients of the 2010 Music Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Asia is one of sixteen award recipients and will receive a $7,500 prize, given to composers in the United States. 

Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the Academy and selected by a committee from its members.

A noted and eclectic composer, Asia has been at the UA since 1988.

From 1991 to 1994 he also was composer-in-residence with the Phoenix Symphony, and from 1977 to 1995 was the music director of the New York-based contemporary ensemble Musical Elements.

His five symphonies have received wide acclaim from live performances and international recordings. Under a recent Barlow Endowment grant, he is presently writing for the Czech Nonet, the world's oldest continuously performing chamber ensemble, founded in 1924. 

"I am of course delighted to receive this award," Asia said. "This affirmation by my peers is most welcome, and as it is for my work over the last thirty years or so, it is especially gratifying."

Asia's list of grants includes Meet the Composer, a UK Fulbright award, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood fellowships, DAAD Fellowship, Copland Fund grants, NEA, Koussevitsky Foundation and Fromm Foundation. 

His recorded works are on the Summit, New World and Albany labels.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters is an honor society of 250 architects, composers, artists and writers. Election to the academy is considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the U.S. 

The Academy, according to its Web site, fosters and sustains interest in literature, music and the fine arts by identifying and encouraging individual artists through awards and prizes, exhibitions, performances and purchasing works of art to be donated to museums.