Lewis Spratlan, recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in music and the Charles Ives Opera Award (2016) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was born in 1940 in Miami, Florida.
His music, often praised for its dramatic impact and vivid scoring, is performed regularly throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.
He was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Composition, as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Bogliasco, NEA, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and MacDowell Fellowships.
Apollo and Daphne Variations for orchestra was premiered on this tour and Penelope's Knees, double concerto for alto saxophone and bass, was presented in Moscow's Rachmaninoff Hall under Emin Khatchatourian.
He has recently completed Shining: Double Concerto for Cello and Piano, commissioned by cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O'Riley.
Bangladesh for solo piano, commissioned by Piano Spheres, was premiered on October 27, 2015, at REDCAT, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, by Nadia Shpachenko; and Common Ground, for soloists, chorus, and chamber orchestra was premiered on June 25, 2016, by the Crossing Choir and ICE at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral and repeated at Merkin Hall in New York as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival in August 2016.
Dreamworlds, for piano, four hands, was commissioned by Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt and premiered at Mount Holyoke College in February, 2018.