The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc. have awarded commissions for new musical works to three composers. Jointly granting the commissions are the foundations and the performing organizations that will present the newly composed works.

Award winners and the groups co-sponsoring their commissions are Julian Anderson and Talea Ensemble of New York; David Liptak and Deviant Septet of New York; and Andrew Norman and the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

London native Julian Anderson has been composer in residence to Sinfonia 21, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (England), the Cleveland Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and currently the Wigmore Hall. As a teacher, he served as Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London, at Harvard University, and he is currently Professor at the London Guildhall School. Anderson’s commissions have come from the BBC, the Nash Ensemble, the Cheltenham Festival, the London Sinfonietta, and the Asko Ensemble. In 2011 Anderson was a double winner at the British Composer Awards, with his Bell Mass winning in the liturgical category and Fantasias, a commission from the Cleveland Orchestra, taking the orchestral prize. The Discovery of Heaven , a co-commission by the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, attracted significant attention at its premiere in 2012 and went on to win a South Bank Sky Arts Award the same year.

American composer David Liptak was born in Pittsburgh. His compositions have been performed by leading orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States. His recorded music is found on several labels, including the Innova CD American Masters of the 21st Century, as well as the Albany, Bridge, and Centaur labels. Liptak has been commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation for a trumpet concerto for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Liptak was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize, given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of distinguished achievement in the field of chamber music composition. His other composition prizes include the Georges Enesco International Composition Competition and the Minnesota Orchestra’s 75th Anniversary Composers Competition. Other distinctions include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, and the Lillian Fairchild Award. His music is published by Keiser Classical, Alfred Music – Donald Hunsberger Wind Ensemble Library, the American Composers Alliance, and others. A dedicated teacher of composition students for the past three decades, David Liptak is Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught since 1986.

The music of Andrew Norman, a native Midwesterner raised in central California, has been performed by prominent orchestras worldwide, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich. His works have been championed by some of the classical music’s eminent conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, John Adams, Marin Alsop, Simon Rattle, and David Robertson. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Nissim Prize, the Rome Prize, and the Berlin Prize. Norman joined the roster of Young Concert Artists as Composer in Residence in 2008, and held the title “Komponist für Heidelberg” for the 2010-2011 season. He served for two years as Composer-in-Residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia. In 2012, Norman’s string trio The Companion Guide to Rome was named a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Norman teaches at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. His works are published by Schott Music.

Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949, was a champion of contemporary music. Throughout his distinguished career, he played a vital role in the expansion of the repertoire by commissioning new works from composers such as Benjamin Britten, Béla Bartók, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky. He established the Koussevitzky foundations to continue his lifelong commitment to composers and new music. Applications for commissions are accepted annually.

The Koussevitzky commissioning program is designed primarily for established composers who have demonstrated considerable merit through their works and for orchestras and chamber groups that have a record of excellence in the performance of contemporary music. For more information, visit www.Koussevitzky.org.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website.