Joseph Schwantner was born in Chicago in 1943. Schwantner received his musical and academic training at the Chicago conservatory and Northwestern University, completing a doctorate in 1968. From 1982 to 1985, Schwantner served as Composer-in-Residence with the Saint Louis Symphony orchestra as part of the Meet the Composer/Orchestra Residencies Program funded by the Exxon Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been the subject of a television documentary entitled Soundings, produced by WGBH in Boston for national broadcast. His work, Magabunda “Four Poems of Agueda Pizarro,” recorded on Nonesuch Records by the Saint Louis Symphony, was nominated for a 1985 Grammy Award in the category “Best New Classical Composition,” and his A Sudden Rainbow, also recorded on Nonesuch by the Saint Louis Symphony, received a 1987 Grammy nomination for “Best Classical Composition.”
Schwantner's music has been performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico, as well as at the Holland, Ravinia, Adelaide, Bydgoszcz, Bracknell and TideWater Music Festivals, the 1978 ISCM World Music Days held in Helsinki, the 1981 World Music Days in Brussels and the Horizons '83 Festival of Contemporary Music sponsored by the New York Philharmonic, the 1988 New York International Festival of the Arts, and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival 1990.
His orchestral works have been extensively performed by such orchestras as: the London Symphony, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic. Performances by other ensembles include: the London Sinfonietta, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Y Chamber Symphony, Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, 20th Century Consort, Boston Musica Viva, as well as performances by many university-based orchestras and ensembles in the United States and Europe. Major artists that have performed Schwantner's work include: Leonard Slatkin, Emanuel Ax, David Zinman, Raymond Lepard, Lucy Shelton, Pinchas Zukerman, Gerard Schwarz, Gerhardt Zimmermann, Christopher Keene, Ursula Oppens, Sharon Isbin, John Williams, Gunther Herbig, Ransom Wilson, Mark Elder, Joseph Silverstein, William Warfield, Jane Manning, Dawn Upshaw, Gunther Schuller, Coretta Scott King, actor James Earl Jones and Lukas Foss.
His orchestral work Aftertones of Infinity received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. Other awards include First Prize in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards 1981 for Music of Amber and Third Prize 1986 for A Sudden Rainbow; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1978; Consortium Commissioning Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1974, 1977, 1979 and 1988; Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Grant, 1978; ISCM Composers Competition, 1978 and 1980.
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