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Craig Phillips named AGO's Distinguished Composer for 2012

April 18, 2012
THE DIAPASON

Craig Phillips has been chosen as the AGO’s sixteenth Distinguished Composer for 2012.



He will receive this honor at the upcoming national convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where he will also be featured as a commissioned composer.



Phillips serves as director of music at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, California. He completed his undergraduate degree at Oklahoma Baptist University, and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, where he was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate as a student of Russell Saunders.



Phillips has received numerous commissions for organ, choral, and ensemble works, including commissions for AGO national and regional conventions. Awards for composition have included first prize in the 1994 Clarence Mader Competition for Organ Composition, numerous ASCAP awards, and a Meet the Composer grant for a work premiered at the Ojai Festival in California.



See the interview, “A Conversation with Composer Craig Phillips,” by David Kelley, in the June 2009 issue of THE DIAPASON.



The AGO Distinguished Composer is nominated every two years by the Committee on New Music (John Karl Hirten, director, Eileen Hunt, and John Nuechterlein), and approved by the national council.



Dr. Phillips joins a long list that include past honorees Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Daniel Pinkham, Samuel Adler, William Albright, Emma Lou Diemer, Dan Locklair, Stephen Paulus, and David Hurd