For more than 25 years, BYU’s Barlow Endowment for Music Composition has been quietly commissioning the Beethovens of our time and, over the years, has garnered a reputation as one of the more prestigious awards a composer can receive.
This reputation was recently burnished when a Barlow Endowment—commissioned piece, Meanwhile by Stephen Hartke, received two 2013 Grammy Awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.
Hartke wrote the piece in 2004 for the ensemble eighth blackbird, and it was recorded in 2012 on the group’s eighth album, which takes its title from Hartke’s work.
The Barlow Endowment has had a strong record of promoting talented composers. It has commissioned four works that have been a finalist or won a Pulitzer Prize. Many Barlow-commissioned composers have also gone on to win Pulitzers, including the past two winners, Zhou Long and Kevin Puts. Read more about the achievements of Barlow-commissioned composers on the endowment’s website.