Composer Wins 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship
Dirk Sutro | April 13, 2009
Composer Lei Liang, assistant professor of music at UC San Diego, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2009.
Awards go to leading artists, scientists and scholars in the United States and Canada. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.
"The award gives me the most precious gift: time to focus on composing," says Liang, who has not yet been notified as to the amount of the award. "There are a few pieces I am eager to concentrate on, including a new work commissioned by the New York Philharmonic."
Since joining the music faculty in the fall of 2007, Liang, 36, has been on a prodigious creative streak. This month alone, his “Trio for cello, piano and percussion” was performed by The Verge Ensemble at The Library of Congress, while The Formalist Quartet will play Liang's piece "Serashi Fragments" at venues including Disney Hall's REDCAT performance space in Los Angeles.
Liang's CD March Cathedral came out in 2007 and his recent composition "Gobi Gloria" is on Dim Sum, a CD released last year by the Ying Quartet. A new CD of Liang's music is due for release on Mode Records later this year.
Liang joins several prominent UCSD music faculty members who have been honored over the years, including Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Reynolds, MacArthur Fellow George Lewis (now teaching at Columbia University) and Grawemeyer winner Chinary Ung.
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