Stephen Taylor
Cortlandt Manor, NY, September 8, 2025 – Recipients were announced today for the 2025 Copland House Residency Awards, one of the flagship programs of the acclaimed creative center for American music and the arts based at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home near New York City and its vast, recently acquired satellite venue at Bluestone Farm on the New York-Connecticut border. Selected composers will receive all-expenses-paid, three- to eight-week stays to live and work at Rock Hill, Copland’s beloved longtime home; they will also become eligible for various post-residency performance, recording, commissioning, and other career development opportunities and awards.
Returning for his second residency at Copland House is composer Stephen Andrew Taylor. Stephen’s music explores boundaries between art and science, including his orchestral Unapproachable Light, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, and his opera Paradises Lost, based on an Ursula K. Le Guin novella. His music has won awards from the Guggenheim and Howard Foundations, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau, College Band Directors National Association, New York State Federation of Music Clubs, and ASCAP. He has been commissioned by the Syracuse Society for New Music, Spoleto Festival, American Composers Orchestra, and Jupiter Quartet, among many others. He co-directs the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and has conducted the Sinfonia da Camera and Nouveau Classical Project. A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he has written and lectured on data sonification, György Ligeti, African rhythm, Björk, and Radiohead. In popular music, he has collaborated with Pink Martini, rock singer Storm Large, The Von Trapps, cabaret/performance artist Meow Meow, and pianist Lang Lang, and his arrangements have been performed by the Chicago, San Francisco, and Oregon Symphonies, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and BBC Concert Orchestra.
During his time at the Copland House, he worked on some pieces for solo piano and data sonification. His previous residency with the Copland House was in 2008.
