Judith Lang Zaimont is internationally recognized for her music’s distinctive style, characterized by its spirit of rhapsody, emotion, and expressive strength, and repeatedly cited by reviewers and listeners for her creation of inventive and widely varied colors and textures. Many of her 120 works are prize-winning compositions; these include four symphonies, chamber opera, oratorios and cantatas, music for wind ensemble, vocal-chamber pieces with varying accompanying ensembles, a wide variety of chamber works, and solo music for string and wind instruments, piano, organ, and voice.
Her most recent prizes include 2012 Tempus Continuum and Third Millennium ensemble’s First Prizes for chamber works, First Prize in the 2015 The American Prize for Chamber Music Composition for STRING QUARTET ‘The Figure’, and a top award in the 2016 The American Prize for Orchestral Composition for Pure, Cool (Water) – Symphony No. 4. Earlier awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, the Gottschalk Centenary Gold Medal, a composer grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, First Prize in the 1995 McCollin International Composers Competition (Symphony No. 1), a Maryland State Arts Council creative fellowship, two commission grants from American Composers Forum, grants to support recordings from the Aaron Copland Fund at the American Music Center (1995, 2002) and Columbia University’s Ditson Fund, 2003 Aaron Copland Award, 2005 Adolphus Bush Foundation Fellowship, First Prize in the 2005 American Composers Invitational Composition Competition – Jabez Press, TX (A Calendar Set – 12 Preludes), two grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts (2008 and 2012), plus other national and international awards. Her music is included on two Century Lists (Chamber Music America and Piano & Keyboard) and her recordings have to date been cited on four Fanfare best-of-the-year Want Lists.
Zaimont has enjoyed a distinguished career as composer of works in many genres, with performances at major halls around the world including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museum, the “Egg” Theater in Beijing, Hong Kong City Hall, Wiener Musikhaus (Vienna), and at The Kremlin. Her music is widely performed throughout the U.S.and Europe by major national and international soloists and ensembles, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Camerata Bern (Switzerland), Baltimore Symphony, Missouri Symphony, Janacek Philharmonic (Czech Republic), Connecticut Opera, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestras (NY and Boston), Mississippi Symphony, Berlin and Czech Radio Symphonies, Zagreb Saxophone Quartet, Harlem String Quartet, Bergen Wind Quintet (Norway), Presidio Saxophone Quartet (Tucson), Gregg Smith Singers, Elmer Isseler Singers (Canada), Laudebus (London), Ernst Senfft Chor (Berlin), New York Virtuoso Singers, Portland Symphonic Choir (Oregon), Amor Artis, Dale Warland Singers (Minneapolis), Women’s Philharmonic, Jacksonville (FL), Greenville(NC), Rockford (IL), Madison (WI), Laramie (WY) and Harrisburg (PA) Symphonies, Slovak National Philharmonic, Kharkov Philharmonic (Ukraine), the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, and wind ensembles at Florida State University, University of Minnesota, Georgia State, University of Connecticut, and University of Virginia and Trinity College ( Greenwich, UK); and such distinguished solo artists as renowned soprano Arleen Augér, pianist Dalton Baldwin, oboist Lisa Kozenko, cellist Tanya Remenikova, tenor Charles Bressler, baritones James Maddalena and David Arnold, pianists Olga Kern, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Joanne Polk, Elizabeth Moak, Awadagin Pratt, Bradford Gowan, and many others.
Her biography is found in most standard reference works (e.g., New Grove’s), and she is the subject both of individual chapters in specialist volumes and major articles in professional journals (The Clarinet, Fanfare, NATS Journal, Choral Journal, International Piano, Mississippi Rag,: Clavier, Chamber Music magazine, Piano Today, IAWM Journal, etc.) In 2000 Judith Zaimont and Joanne Polk co-founded American Accent, a performing series in New York City dedicated to repeat performances at the highest artistic and interpretative level of significant chamber-music works composed by Americans of the present and recent past. The series featured the Lark Quartet, Joanne Polk, and Alan Kay as core performers with additional guest artists; Zaimont served as co-director and head of programming throughout the series’ three seasons.
Judith Zaimont’s recorded works are issued by Naxos, Navona, MSR Classics, Harmonia Mundi, Arabesque, Albany, Jeanné, Leonarda, Northeastern, and 4Tay labels. She is a member of ASCAP and her principal publishers are Subito Music, ECS, and Jeanné.