Composer Sean Shepherd Wins $200,000 Charles Ives Living Award

The American composer will receive a stipend for two years while he writes new works

Composer Sean Shepherd has been awarded the 2023 Charles Ives Living Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters — which will see him receive an annual stipend of $100,000 per annum for the next two years.

The award, funded from Charles Ives's estate at the wishes of his widow, Harmony Ives, allows composers to devote themselves fully to their craft without having to worry about the ever-present financial pressures built into the profession.

Shepherd has had works commissioned by the BBC, Boston, Chicago, Gewandhaus, Minnesota, Montréal, National, and New World symphony orchestras, as well as radio orchestras in Austria, France, and Germany. April 2023 saw the premiere of his work On a clear day, which sets poetry by Ulla Hahn. The first performance was given by conductor Kent Nagano, cellist Jan Vogler, the Hamburgische Staatsorchester, and a choir of young singers from around the world at Carnegie Hall.

Having recently completed his tenure as the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra, he has also served as the first-ever Composer-in-Residence of his hometown orchestra, the Reno Philharmonic, the 2008 Deutsche Bank Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and the USA Van Dusen Fellow by the United States Artists.

Shepherd is also the winner of the 2009 triennial Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2005 international Lutoslawski Award.

In 2023, the jury for the Ives Living Award comprised Augusta Read Thomas, Chen Yi, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Davis, Stephen Hartke, and Jennifer Higdon. Candidate nominations came from the architect, artist, writer, and composer members of Arts and Letters.

"The opportunity that the Charles Ives Living provides — space and time for real creative immersion and work — is the rarest and most precious of honors," Shepherd said. "Charles and Harmony Ives’s legacy and Arts and Letters’s continuing commitment to artists fill me with gratitude, and together they amount to no less than a mandate, which I intend to honor."

"In getting lost, confused, frustrated, hopeful, inspired, elated, all perhaps on a daily basis on projects great and small, and by consistently going as deep as I possibly can, I’ll get to be a composer," he added. "It’s a true privilege."

"Sean Shepherd is a naturally musical composer who has consistently followed his own personal artistic vision," said Augusta Read Thomas, one of Arts and Letters’s Vice-Presidents for Music. "Each intelligent and well-etched creation presents another facet of his kaleidoscopic, luminous craft. In his musical compositions, such as On a clear day, multi-layered, highly-detailed, sonic landscapes of shimmering density reveal tremendous breadth and somber depth."