Distinguished Professor Tania León was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters along with eight other distinguished composers, artists and authors. The academy annually honors several of our country’s most esteemed artists, composers and writers. Professor León joins a distinguished roster of 45 other living American composers that includes John Adams, Dominick Argento, Milton Babbitt, Jack Beeson, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, Ornette Coleman, John Corigliano, George Crumb, Mario Davidovsky, David Del Tredici, Carlisle Floyd, Philip Glass, Karel Husa, Betsy Jolas, Steve Reich, Ned Rorem, Frederic Rzewski, Gunther Schuller, Stephen Sondheim, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, Olly W. Wilson, Charles Wuorinen and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

January 2010:  The Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music has been awarded a modest grant ($8,800) from the New York Council for the Humanities in support of the Black Brooklyn Renaissance project. Working in conjunction with our partners — the Brooklyn Arts Council and the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation — HISAM will coordinate a one-day conference on Oct. 23, 2010. The gathering of scholars, musicians and culture critics will focus on the music, dance and verbal performing arts that have contributed to Brooklyn’s rise to prominence as a center of black culture over the past 50 years. The conference will examine the migration, immigration and political movements that have galvanized these cultural expressions while drawing attention to the evolving interplay between southern African American, Afro-Caribbean, and West African traditions. The Black Brooklyn Renaissance Conference will be part of a larger yearlong project coordinated by BAC and BSRC, a series of public performances and workshops across the borough.