William Bolcom
American composer (born 1938)
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, and the Detroit Music Award, and was named Composer of the Year by Musical America in 2007. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 2008 and was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 2006. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
Early life and education
Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington. At age 11, he studied under faculty at University of Washington, including composition with professors George Frederick McKay and John Verrall and piano with Berthe Poncy Jacobson. He later studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, with Leland Smith at Stanford University, and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2ème Prix de Composition.
Career
Bolcom was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1964 and 1968. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano. He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music in 1973.
“William Bolcom” enters the record as american composer (born 1938). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Bolcom and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q710714. VIAF identifies the subject as 32188813. The Library of Congress control number is n81080002. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 2007, 1973 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Bolcom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.