Judith Lang Zaimont

The music of Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945) is internationally acclaimed for its immediacy, dynamism, and emotion and is performed world-wide. Her style is distinguished by its spirit of rhapsody featuring sudden shifts in texture, instrumental coloring, and atmosphere. Her 128 works include many prizewinning pieces covering every genre: Six symphonies, chamber opera, music for wind ensemble, for chorus and solo voice, and works for individual instruments plus a wide variety of chamber music, and orchestral music for video games. Among orchestras programming her music are the: Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Berlin and Czech Radio Symphonies, Slovak National Philharmonic, Camerata Bern, Musica Nova, the Janacek Philharmonic, Women’s Philharmonic, Missouri Symphony, Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra. 

Her music is adopted for repertoire lists for major international performance competitions (e.g., Cliburn ’01, San Antonio, ’03, Kapell ’12, APA ’17); two of her compositions are on Century Lists: Doubles (Chamber Music America), and Sonata (Piano & Keyboard international magazine); and her fourth symphony, PURE, COOL (Water), was named one of the five best symphonies ever composed by a woman. (Serenade magazine, July 2022). Her prizes and honors include the 2016 The American Prize- FIRST PRIZE for Chamber Music Composition, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, awards from both National Endowments (NEA: composition / NEH: musicology), a 2005 (Adolphus) Bush Foundation Fellowship and earlier American Pen Women Fellowship, IAWM, CBDNA, Maryland, and New York State arts fellowships, the Andrew G. Mellon Foundation commission (2007), an Aaron Copland Award (2003), Ernst Bacon Award: The American Prize (2018), FIRST PRIZE – Gold Medal in the Gottschalk Centenary Composition Competition, McCollin International Composers Competition FIRST PRIZE, and earlier grants and awards from state arts councils in Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Arizona, and the Mayor’s Prize for Creativity (Baltimore).  

A notable pianist from childhood on (age 11: The Lawrence Welk Show; age 16: Mitch Miller Show), Zaimont is also a distinguished educator with professor appointments over 36 years at U.S. universities, including Peabody Conservatory, Queens College and Hunter College at CUNY, chairing the Music Department at Adelphi University (1989-1991), and the University of Minnesota (1992 – 2005) where she led the Composition program from 1998 onwards. She is equally skilled as a writer, creating and editing the award-winning Greenwood book series The Musical Woman: An International Perspective. Her American Music Teacher magazine article Embracing New Music was named 2009 Article of the Year by Music Teachers National Association (MTNA).