Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music

Mannes College of Music

Mannes College The New School for Music is The New School university's music conservatory. While the university's main campus is located in Greenwich Village, New York City, Mannes maintains its main academic building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan....

. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983.

Shulamit Ran is a longtime faculty member of the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 and has served as composer-in-residence with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...

 and the Chicago Lyric Opera. More recently she wrote a Violin Concerto (2003) for the Israeli violinist Ittai Shapira.

Ran studied with Ralph Shapey

Ralph Shapey

Ralph Shapey was an American composer and conductor. He is well-known for his work as a composition professor at the University of Chicago, where he founded and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players...

 and dedicated her Symphony to him.

Many critics have commented on the combination of raw power and classical structure in Ran's work. Ran has written that she considers classical-era composer Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 her "compositional idol," and her work combines a taste for rigorous structural logic with a unique brand of "free atonality

Atonality

Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

."

Her students include C. P. First.

External links

• Art of the States: Shulamit Ran
• Shulamit Ran biography, analysis of compositional style and photograph on the site of Presser music publisher and distributor