Composer and Professor Erin Gee wins the 29th Herb Alpert Award in the Arts

Professor of music composition, Erin Gee, is one of the recipients of the 29th Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Each of the 11 winners will receive an unrestricted prize of $75,000 and participate in a residency at the California Institute of the Arts.

The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts honors artists in the disciplines of dance, music, theater, film, video, and visual arts. Gee was selected for her work as a composer and vocalist. Her well-known series, Mouthpieces, began as a solo voice piece before evolving into over 30 works for orchestra, opera, vocal ensemble, large chamber ensemble and string quartet. The series has been performed internationally with some of the top ensembles for new music. It was recently announced that Gee has been promoted to the rank of professor with tenure. 

Gee’s awards for composition include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, the 2008 Rome Prize, the Award in Music and a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Zürich Opera House’s Teatro Minimo, and the International Rostrum of Composers Award among others.

The music panel that selected Gee (composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel, composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z) shared with The Hollywood Reporter that she was selected for this award “for her groundbreaking explorations of the human voice, and her focused and sublime aural imagination. Creating micro-worlds brimming with nuanced and fresh colors, continuing to develop and deepen an innovative and personal musical vocabulary, she is carving out a potent and vital space within contemporary music.”