Discipline: Music Composition

Melinda Wagner

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Ridgewood, NJ
MacDowell fellowships: 1986, 1988, 1991, 2001
Melinda Wagner is a composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music for her Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduate degrees from University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the ‘Bravo!’ Vail Valley Music Festival. She has received many honorable mentions, including a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and three ASCAP Young Composer awards. Beforehand, she also received an honorary degree from Hamilton College. Some of her famous pieces are the Trombone Concerto (2007), Falling Angels (1992), and Extremity of Sky (2002).

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Melinda Wagner worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

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