FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Aaron Travers, associate professor of music in composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, is one of four composers who will receive an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters this year.
The $10,000 award honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges composers who have “arrived at their own voice,” according to the academy.
Each of the recipients will also receive an additional $10,000 to record their work and have their music presented in a concert at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
“The Composition Department is thrilled that Aaron Travers is being honored with the Arts and Letters Award in Music,” said David Dzubay, chair of the department. “This is his third award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, having received the Charles Ives Award in 2004 and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship in 2010—truly a remarkable accomplishment.”
“I certainly wasn’t expecting this, and I’m incredibly honored to receive this award among such absurdly talented people,” said Travers.
Among numerous other honors, Travers has won the 2021 Mader Composition Competition for solo organ, 2016 Red Note Music Festival Composition Award, 2013 Second Prize in the Alexander Zemlinsky Composition Competition from the Cincinnati Conservatory and 2007 Fromm Music Foundation Commission Award.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced 18 recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $205,000 and include several categories. The winners were selected by a committee of academy members after candidates were nominated by its 300 members.
The awards will be presented at the academy’s Ceremonial on May 18.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers and writers. Early members include Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Edith Wharton.