May 18, 2001 UNT Inhouse publication: McTee receives Guggenheim Fellowship to write first symphony

homepage

McTee receives Guggenheim Fellowship to write first symphony

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Cindy McTee, Regents Professor of music, a 2001 fellowship.

The $36,000 fellowship, and a faculty development leave from the university, will allow McTee to devote an entire year to the composition of her first symphony, recently commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., for first performance in the fall of 2002.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was established in 1925 by U.S. Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife as a tribute to a son who died in 1922. Fellowships are awarded to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

McTee writes music for both acoustic and electronic media. Her compositions have been performed by leading orchestras, bands and chamber ensembles in the United States, Japan, South America and Europe.

A citation awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters states that "Cindy McTee brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice."

Her past awards include a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Fellowship in 1990, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992 and a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994.

McTee has taught composition at UNT since 1984.

She earned her bachelor's degree from Pacific Lutheran University in 1975, her master's degree from the Yale School of Music in 1978 and her doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1981. Her primary teacher was respected Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.