For release: March 14, 2013
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Kamran Ince

University of Memphis composition professor Kamran Ince has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Music. The $7,500 prize honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Each winner will receive an additional $7,500 toward the recording of one work. 

“The energy and rawness of Turkish and Balkan music, the spirituality of Byzantium and Ottoman music, the tradition of European art music and the extravert and popular qualities of the American psyche are the basis of Kamran Ince’s sound world,” said the Academy in announcing the award. “These ingredients happily breathe in cohesion as they spin the linear and vertical contrasts so essential to his works.”

Ince’s numerous other prizes include the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lili Boulanger Prize. His Waves of Talya was named one of the best chamber works of the 20th Century by a living composer by Chamber Music magazine. Leading orchestras throughout the world perform Ince’s works. Present Music and the Milwaukee Opera Theatre will premiere his opera Judgment of Midas in April.

Ince was born in Montana in 1960 to American and Turkish parents. He earned a doctorate from Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He serves as professor of composition in the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music and co-director of MIAM (Center for Advanced Research in Music) at Istanbul Technical University.

Each year, the Academy honors more than 50 composers, artists, architects and writers with cash awards ranging from $5,000 to $75,000. The recipients of awards are chosen by committees whose members are drawn from the Academy’s roster.