James Grant

For three decades, James Grant has been commissioned by individuals, choruses, chamber ensembles and orchestras who have performed his music throughout the world. In 2002, Grant was one of five American composers to win the Aaron Copland Award; and in 2004, he won the Sylvia Goldstein Award, sponsored by Copland House. His orchestral overture Chart won first prize in the 1998 Louisville Orchestra competition for new orchestral music.

After completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Cornell University, Grant was Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College in Vermont between 1988-1992, where he taught composition, coordinated an American Music Week Festival each year, and directed the New Music From Middlebury concert series. In 1992, Grant left academe to compose full-time and from 1993-96 served as Composer-In-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in Fairfax, Virginia. In 2003, Grant completed a five-year position as Composer-In-Residence to the Bay-Atlantic Symphony in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

Recognized by Cornell University's Graduate School of Humanities and Arts and by the Vermont chapter of the National Music Teachers Association for exceptional contributions as an educator, Grant continues to be active as a lecturer and private teacher of composition. Grant's colorful musical language is known by musicians and audiences for its honed craft and immediacy.

Grant’s ability to compose music appropriate to specific levels of experience has found him working with groups ranging from professional orchestras, choruses, solo recitalists, new music ensembles and ballet companies to community choruses, university choral and instrumental ensembles, and youth orchestras. His music is regularly programmed at music festivals, symposia, and clinics; and his desire to design new music for a given repertoire has led to numerous successful consortium commissions.

James Grant and his wife, fine-art photographer Elizabeth Siegfried, live and work in Sarasota, FL, and Toronto and Oxtongue Lake, Ontario.

For further information on James Grant and his music, visit: www.JamesGrantMusic.com.