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sai-national.org • Summer 2026 5 Music Notes 1983 1983 Beta Alpha initiate Ellen T. Zwilich for Three Movements for Orchestra 1991 1991 SAI Composers Bureau member Shulamit Ran for Symphony 1999 1999 Melinda Wagner for Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion 2010 2010 SAI Honorary Member Jennifer Higdon for Violin Concerto 2013 2013 Caroline Shaw for Partita for 8 Voices 2015 2015 Julia Wolfe for Anthracite Fields 2017 2017 Du Yun for Angel's Bone 2019 2019 Ellen Reid for p r i s m 2021 2021 SAI National Arts Associate Tania León for Stride 2023 2023 Rhiannon Giddens and SAI Composers Bureau Member Michael Abels for Omar 2025 2025 Susie Ibarra for Sky Islands 2026 2026 Gabriela L. Frank for Picaflor: A Future Myth WOMEN WHO HAVE WON THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MUSIC WOMEN WHO HAVE WON THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MUSIC The Pulitzer Prize in Music is awarded annually to a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States the preceding year. The winner for 2026 is Picaflor: A Future Myth, by Gabriela Lena Frank. Premiered on March 13, 2025 at Marian Anderson Hall, Philadelphia, Picaflor: A Future Myth depicts an original story by the composer, inspired by Andean Peruvian mythology and reimaged in a futuristic setting. It draws upon the legends of a sky kingdom ruled by a sun god creator, a rebellious hummingbird (Picaflor) who tears through the sky, and the chaski—messengers of the Inca Empire. The piece is also immersed in the concept of pachacuti, the belief that era-worlds undergo cataclysmic transformations every few hundred years. These elements reflect the composer's own climate activism in both art and life, informed by personal experiences with California wildfires. Picaflor: A Future Myth is dedicated to Kaija Saariaho, and was co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Oregon Symphony. Cultural heritage has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/ Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/ Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America, and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a Western classical framework that is uniquely her own. Frank is a 2025 inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was included in the Washington Post's list of the thirty-five most significant women composers in history. She earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was winner the Margaret Blackburn composition competition in 2001. Andrew Rindfleisch's American Descent is a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Described as "an energetic, emotional work" by the Pulitzer Prize Board, this work explores the precipitous decline of a once- prosperous society into a culture of chaos, division, and violence, where previously thriving communities become powerless in the shadow of feckless and immoral leadership. American Descent was commissioned and premiered by the NO EXIT New Music Ensemble in Cleveland, Ohio. Rindfleisch is a member of the SAI Composers Bureau who has served as a conductor, pianist, vocalist, improviser, record producer, and radio show host. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission from the Library of Congress, and a Charles Ives Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He heads the Music Composition Program at Cleveland State University and leads the Composition Institute at the CHROMA International Music Festival outside Budapest, Hungary. Picaflor: A Future Myth Wins 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music American Descent named Pulitzer Prize finalist

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