Melinda Wagner (born 1957)
Melinda Jane Wagner was born in Philadelphia and currently resides in New Jersey. She earned degrees from Hamilton College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swathmore College, Syracuse University, and Hunter College.
Melinda Wagner’s compositions are often traditionally structured, and she imbues her modernist and abstract musical language with wonderful chromatic lyricism and a keen sense of orchestration. Her gloriously colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music. This is a recording of that work:
This is a recent chamber work entitled Unsung Chordata. In the description of the video, Melinda Wagner describes the work as being inspired by a video of a puffer fish.