Four composers will each receive a $10,000 Arts and Letters Award in Music, which honors outstanding artistic achievement by acomposer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Each will receive an additional $10,000 toward the recording of one work. The winners are Robert Carl, Robert Kyr, Sean Shepherd, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. Seventeen total composers will share awards totaling more than $200,000 this year. Previous award winners include ACA composers David Froom, Ross Bauer, Matthew Greenbaum, David Liptak, Brian Fennelly, Marilyn Shrude, Nicholas C.K. Thorne, Gheorghe Costinescu, John Melby, Ramon Zupko, Robert Helps, Daniel Perlongo, Raoul Pleskow, Phillip Rhodes, John Eaton, Sydney Hodkinson, Nicolas Roussakis, Harvey Sollberger, Leslie Bassett, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Halsey Stevens, Lester Trimble, Roger Goeb, John Lessard, Frank Wigglesworth, Ben Weber, Normand Lockwood, Otto Luening, and Robert McBride.
The music of Robert Carlis performed regularly in New York, throughout the U.S., and abroad. His compositionsconcentrateon solo piano, chamber, orchestral, choral, and electroacoustic music, andaims to create a sense of space that provides the listener with a sense of freedom and openness. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998 Charles Ives Fellowship). Residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, UCross, Djerassi, Millay, Bogliasco, Carmargo, and Bellagio. He lived in Japan for three months as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow in 2007. He is the author of Terry Rileys In C (Oxford University Press). He is currently chair of composition at The Hartt School, University of Hartford.