SHULAMIT RAN, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in composition, has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, Chamber Music America, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, first prize in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards competition for orchestral music, and many more. Born in Israel, Ran came to the U.S. at the age of fourteen to study composition and piano, having received scholarships from The Mannes College of Music in New York and the America Israel Cultural Foundation.
Her music has been played by many major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony under both Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi in two U.S. tours, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Gary Bertini, the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, as well as the New York Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, National Symphony, Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Jerusalem Orchestra, and many others.
Between 1990 and 1997 she was Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony, having been appointed that position by Maestro Daniel Barenboim as part of the Meet The Composer Orchestra Residences Program. Between 1994 and 1997 she was also the fifth Brena and Lee Freeman Sr. Composer-in-Residence with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where her residency culminated in the much-acclaimed premiere of her first opera BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (THE DYBBUK).
Ran is presently the William H. Colvin Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 1973. The recipient of four honorary doctorates, her works are published by Theodore Presser Company and by the Israeli Music Institute. For more complete information about Shulamit Ran, please visit www.presser.com/composers/ran.html.