The American composer Joseph Schwantner is considered to be among the most successful and respected living composers in the United States. In 1978 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral work Aftertones of Infinity. Music of Amber for chamber ensemble took first prize in 1981 in the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Excellence in Chamber Composition.

Joseph Schwantner was born in Chicago in 1943 and received his academic education at the Chicago Conservatory and at Northwestern University, where he graduated in 1968. Subsequently he has served as a member of the faculties of Yale, Eastman and the Juilliard School. In May 2002 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Schwantner was official composer with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra in its Meet the Composer/Orchestra Residencies Program, sponsored by the Exxon Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A documentary film was made about him, under the title Soundings. His music ranges from works for chamber ensemble to large-scale orchestral compositions, many of the latter regularly included in the programmes of the best known American orchestras. His most successful work must be his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, also recorded on CD by RCA.

Discography