The works of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Shulamit Ran display an emotional quality and technical superiority that has led critics to acclaim her music as “written with the same sense of humanity found in Mozart’s most profound opera arias or Mahler’s searching symphonies.”
Ran began composing songs to Hebrew poetry at age 7 in her native Israel. By 9, she was studying composition and piano with some of Israel’s most noted musicians, including composers Alexander U. Boskovich and Paul Ben-Haim; within several years was having her early works performed by professional musicians as well as orchestras. She continued her piano and composition studies in the United States, on scholarships from the Mannes College of Music in New York and the America Israel Cultural Foundation, with Nadia Reisenberg and Norman Dello Joio, respectively. She later studied piano with Dorothy Taubman. Ran also lists her late colleague and friend Ralph Shapey, with whom she studied in 1977, as an important mentor.
Among her numerous awards, fellowships and commissions are those from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, WFMT-FM, Chamber Music America, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Eastman School of Music, the American Composers Orchestra (Concerto for Orchestra), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Concerto da Camera II) and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Symphony 1989-90, first performed in 1990, Pulitzer Prize 1991, first place Kennedy Center Friedheim Award 1992).
Her other orchestral works include Legends, a joint commission celebrating the centennials of the Chicago Symphony and the University of Chicago, which premiered in 1993, and Vessels of Courage and Hope, commissioned by the Albert Shapiro Fund and premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1998 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Israel and the voyage of the S.S. President Warfield/Exodus 1947.
Her music has been played by many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Jerusalem Orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Amsterdam Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the American Composers Orchestra; her works have been conducted by Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Gary Bertini, Christoph von Dohnanyi (in two U.S. tours), Gustavo Dudamel and Yehudi Menuhin, among others.
Other performers include the Da Capo Chamber Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble under Arthur Weisberg, Twentieth Century Consort, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, New York Philomusica, the Pennsylvania Contemporary Players, the Mendelssohn String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, the Penderecki Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, the Peabody Trio, Musical Elements, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Callisto Ensemble (for which Ran was the 2006-2007 theme composer), both Collage and Musica Viva in Boston, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her works have been performed at the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, Santa Fe and Yellow Barn summer festivals, among many others.
Ran has performed extensively as a pianist in the States, Europe, Israel and elsewhere, and is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the department of music at the University of Chicago, where she began teaching in 1973. During her professorship, she served as the artistic director of Contempo, formerly the Contemporary Chamber Players. In 1987, Ran was visiting professor at Princeton University, and in 2010, the Howard Hanson Visiting Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music.
She has received honorary doctorates from Mount Holyoke College (1988), the Spertus Institute (1994), Beloit College (1996), the New School of Social Research in New York (1997) and Bowdoin College (2004). Ran was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003. In 2018, she was composer-in-residence with the world-renowned Marlboro Festival, as well as at the International String Quartet Competition and Festival in Banff, Canada.
Ran’s works are published by the Theodore Presser Company and the Israeli Music Institute. She has had recordings released on more than a dozen labels, including Albany, Angel, Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Erato, Koch International Classics, New World, Vox and Warner Classics.
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSO by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
