| Marilyn Shrude (Photo courtesy of BGSU Office of Marketing and Communications) |
Marilyn Shrude, of the faculty of the Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts, has won a
2011 Guggenheim Fellowship.
The composer, of Bowling Green, was one of 180 scholars, writers and artists, from 78 disciplines, chosen
by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 3,000 applicants to receive awards.
Of the recipients 10 are composers, split between classical, jazz and crossover genres. They include
composers affiliated with the Juilliard School and Harvard University as well as jazz master Randy
Weston.
The fellowships are designed to nurture scholarship and creative activity among established artists and
scholars.
The awards, Shrude said, are based on "your body of work."
Shrude had already set to take a faculty improvement leave from her duties as chair of the musicology,
composition and theory department at the College of Musical Arts. She will work on two major
commissions. A large chamber piece for the Brave New Woks ensemble, founded in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a
commission for piano, cello and violin trio to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Walla Walla
Chamber Music Festival in Washington State. The Brave New Works piece will receive its premier
performance during the ensemble’s 2012-2013 season and the composition for the Walla Walla festival will
get its debut in June, 2012.
Shrude said she has applied a couple times before for a Guggenheim. This year she applied knowing she had
the leave and would be in a position to make good use of the fellowship. Now, she said, she hopes to
spend part of the year in an artist colony either in the United States or Europe. "I would like to
go away somewhere away from my familiar surroundings," she said.
Winning the award has a side benefit. The Guggenheim Foundation publishes a full page advertisement in
the New York Times to announce the winners. When that appeared last year, "I heard from people I
haven’t heard from in 20 years."
Receiving the honor "reminds people you’re still around … It renews friendships."
A distinguished artist professor, Shrude’s pieces have been performed and recorded around the world. The
composer has received numerous awards over her career including being the first woman to receive the
Kennedy Center Fredheim Award for Orchestral Music in 1984 and the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1998.
