The Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University has awarded American composer John Corigliano the 2026 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. Corigliano will receive a $150,000 cash award and participate in two on-campus residencies at the Bienen School of Music.
Established in 2003, the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition honors composers of outstanding achievement. Previous winners include Tania León, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Reich, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Aaron Jay Kernis, John Luther Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Oliver Knussen, and John Adams.
“John Corigliano has been a significant and influential force in American music for several decades. His work is full of color and emotion, commanding engagement from both performers and audiences,” said Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of the Bienen School of Music.
“His first symphony, written during his time as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first composer-in-residence, is one of the most significant works of our time. We are pleased to recognize him with the Nemmers Prize and excited for our students to interact with him and his music,” said Holland.
Corigliano's first Northwestern residency, planned for May 2027, will include performances of his music by Bienen student ensembles as well as master classes, chamber music coachings, and composition colloquia, among other activities. The residency will culminate in a joint concert of the school’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band on Friday, May 28, 2027. Corigliano's second residency will take place during the 2027-2028 academic year.
“I couldn’t be more honored to join the list of amazing composers to whom the Nemmers Prize has been previously awarded,” said Corigliano. “The faculty and students of Northwestern University have, in the past, given me some of my happiest musical experiences, and I look forward to sharing what I can with them in the coming two years.”
About John Corigliano
John Corigliano's music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. His honors include the Pulitzer Prize, the Grawemeyer Award, an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and five Grammy Awards.
Perhaps one of the most important symphonists of his era, Corigliano has to date written three symphonies, each a landscape unto itself. Symphony No. 1 (1991), commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was composer-in-residence, channeled Corigliano's personal grief over the loss of friends to the AIDS crisis. Symphony No. 2 (2001), a rethinking and expansion of the surreal and virtuosic String Quartet (1995), was introduced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Symphony No. 3: Circus Maximus (2004) was commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, who gave its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall.
Triathlon, Corigliano's tenth piece for soloist and orchestra, was premiered in 2021 by saxophonist Timothy McAllister and the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. It joined Corigliano's catalog of concerti for piano, oboe, clarinet, flute (Pied Piper Fantasy), guitar (Troubadours), violin (The Red Violin), and percussion (Conjurer), as well as the orchestral song-cycles Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan for amplified soprano and One Sweet Morning for mezzo-soprano. Other scores include a rich folio of chamber works.
Corigliano's first opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in honor of the company’s centennial. Its 2015 staging by Los Angeles Opera earned Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Classical album. The opera made its French debut in 2019 when Royal Opera of Versailles, in collaboration with Glimmerglass Opera, brought the opera to the very theatre in which it was set. Corigliano's second opera, The Lord of Cries, with a libretto by Mark Adamo based on Euripides’s The Bacchae and Bram Stoker's Dracula, was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and premiered in 2021.
Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music. He retired from the position of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, in 2020.
About the Nemmers Prizes
Awarded by Northwestern University, the prestigious Nemmers Prize recognizes renowned leaders from institutions outside of Northwestern who have made lasting contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis.
Northwestern administers five Nemmers prizes: the Nemmers Prize in Earth Sciences, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, the Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science, and the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition.