Alum receives young composer award

Julia Adolphe ‘10 is one of 19 recipients of the 2017 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. The awards are given to concert music composers up to 30 years of age whose works are selected through a national competition. More than 500 entries were submitted to the competition in 2017.

The competition, established in 1979, is named in honor of Morton Gould, a Pulitzer prize-winning composer who served as president of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). ASCAP is a non-profit member organization dedicated to supporting American musicians through talent development programs, scholarships, and songwriting workshops.

Adolphe’s work, described as “colorful, mercurial, [and] deftly orchestrated” and “alive with invention” by The New York Times and The New Yorker, respectively, has been performed across the United States and abroad by orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.

Adolphe is also an active writer, teacher and producer. In 2013, she co-produced “the Prodigal Son” for the LA Opera Britten Centennial. Her articles on  teaching music in an all-male maximum security prison were published by NewMusicBox in 2014.

Her recent work includes a commission from the New York Philharmonic that premiered at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in July. Adolphe is now pursuing a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. She received her bachelor’s degree in music and was also a college scholar in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Spencer DeRoos is a communications assistant in the College of Arts & Sciences.