Glenn Korff School of Music Professor of Composition and Conducting and Director of Orchestras Tyler White’s orchestra work “A Brand-New Summer” has been awarded The American Prize in Composition (orchestra division) for 2019-2020.
Founded in 2009, The American Prize is an annual national competition in the performing arts providing cash awards, professional adjudication and regional, national and international recognition for the best recorded performances by ensembles and individuals each year in the U.S. at the professional, college/university, church, community, and secondary school levels.
White has been at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln since 1994. In addition to teaching at Nebraska, he is composer-in-residence with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he received his master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from Cornell University, where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winners Steven Stucky and Karel Husa. He has also studied at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau (France).
As a composer, he has received commissions from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, and numerous other organizations.
He has received awards and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, the Macdowell Colony, the Omaha Symphony, and others.
In 2014, his opera “O Pioneers!” was one of eight finalists for The American Prize in composition in opera/theater/film.
In 2001, White was named Composer of the year by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association. In 2003, White’s Elegy “for the orphans of terror” was awarded the Masterworks Prize and was recorded by the Sofia Philharmonic on the inaugural volume of ERMMedia’s “Masterworks of the New Era” CD series, and in 2006, his “Mystic Trumpeter (Symphony No. 2)” was awarded honorable mention in the ASCAP Foundation/Rudolf Nissim Prize competition.