John Corigliano

Eminent classical and film composer John Corigliano was honored as an SCL Ambassador at the annual New York Holiday Party on December 11, 2018.

Corigliano’s scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won him the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards^®, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Oscar^®.

Corigliano first came to prominence in 1964 at the age of 26 when his Sonata for Violin and Piano (1963) was the only winner of the chamber-music competition of the Spoleto Festival in Italy.^[5] In 1970, Corigliano teamed up with David Hess to create The Naked Carmen.

A prolific composer of concert music, Corigliano’s classical repertoire – including three symphonies, eight concerti and over one hundred chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral works – have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. His 1991 opera The Ghosts of Versailles was the Metropolitan Opera’s first commission in three decades.

His film scores are of equal repute: Corigliano received an Oscar^® nomination for 1980’s Altered States, and won for 1998’s The Red Violin. His ‘The Red Violin Caprices’ were exquisitely performed on violin by Phillipe Quint at the SCL New York’s 2018 honorary event.

Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name.