The New Haven Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce the Connecticut Young Composers' Project with Augusta Read Thomas, a two year endeavor which has paired six aspiring Connecticut composers with one of the most honored composers of our time.

The program began in Fall 2009 and will conclude in May 2011.  This past year six young composers from southern Connecticut met with Ms. Thomas to learn the craft of composition from one of the best. At the end of this coming year, the students will each have a composition premiered by the New Haven Symphony Contemporary Music Group. This is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for a young composer.  This concert will be May 15, 2011. 

Augusta Read Thomas (b.1964) is one of the most honored American composers of her generation. Her orchestral compositions have been performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, to mention only a few.

Ms. Thomas studied composition at Tanglewood, Yale, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1997—2006). She has taught at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago. In 2006, she resigned from teaching to devote herself entirely to composition and, in 2007; her Astral Canticle was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Her discography includes 43 commercially recorded CDs.