Augusta Read Thomas

In 2016, the Chicago Tribune named Thomas "Chicagoan of the Year" for her work on the Ear Taxi Festival, "a Chicago-centric marathon of new-music performances that, for six heady days in October, brought together some 500 local musicians to present roughly 100 recent classical works, 54 of them world premieres; 87 living composers were represented".

In 2014 Nimbus Records released an Augusta Read Thomas CD series highlighting her most important work. A Portrait of Augusta Read Thomas (NI6262) included her saxophone concerto Hemke Concerto "Prisms of Light", which was written for and performed by Frederick Hemke and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra under William Boughton. Selected Works for Orchestra (NI6258) contained performances of "Words of the Sea", conducted by Pierre Boulez, and "Carillon Sky", conducted by [Oliver Knussen].

On November 8, 2010, the University of Chicago announced that Augusta Read Thomas would be appointed University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College. She is only the 16th designated professor to be appointed by the University.

In 2007, Astral Canticle, a double concerto for violin, flute, and orchestra, was named one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

She taught at the Eastman School of Music and received tenure there at the age of 33, but left to teach at the Northwestern University School of Music. While still at Eastman, she was appointed as a Mead Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post she retained until 2006, when she was succeeded by Osvaldo Golijov and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Thomas is the longest-serving Mead Composer in Residence in the history of the CSO.

In 2006, she resigned from teaching at Northwestern in order to compose exclusively. She is Chair of the Board of the American Music Center, and divides her time between Chicago and Becket, Massachusetts.

Thomas is married to Anglo-American composer Bernard Rands. In 1997, Russian-American cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented an unconventional concert in which new works by both Rands and Thomas were premiered.

Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is an American composer, professor, and supporter of the arts.

Thomas was born in Glen Cove, New York, in 1964. She attended The Green Vale School before continuing at St. Paul's School, a boarding school, in Concord, New Hampshire. After graduating from high school, she studied composition with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins at Northwestern University. This was before a composition major existed for undergraduates at Northwestern; an exception was made for her as she showed extreme promise as a composer. After graduating from Northwestern, Thomas studied with Jacob Druckman at Yale University and at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson.