Steven Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, raised in Abilene, Texas, and studied at Baylor and Cornell Universities. Stucky taught at Lawrence University in Wisconsin from 1978 to 1980, when he joined the faculty of Cornell University, where he founded the new music group Ensemble X and served as Given Foundation Professor of Composition until his retirement in 2014—he also taught at Aspen Music Festival, Eastman School of Music, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Stucky’s compositions have been widely performed throughout the US and abroad by leading chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras, many written on commissions from major orchestras, National Endowment for the Arts, Yale University, and other organizations. Stucky was composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1988 to 2009, and hosted the New York Philharmonic’s Hear & Now concert series from 2005 until 2009.

In addition to composing, Stucky was also active as a conductor, writer, lecturer, and contributor to music journals in America and Britain; he won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for his 1981 book Lutosławski and His Music. In addition to being awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, Stucky’s other distinctions included the ASCAP Victor Herbert Prize, First Prize from the American Society of University Composers, and membership of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.