Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize (the first female in music), four Grammy nominations, an Academy Award (from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and five honorary doctorates… After receiving BA and MA degrees in music composition from FSU, and a doctorate from the Julliard School, Zwilich was invited to play violin in the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski (from 1965 to 1972). She then devoted herself to composing full-time. The rest of the story is beautiful music, which has been commissioned by such notables as the New York Philharmonic, the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall.