Claude Baker

W. Claude Baker Jr. (born April 12, 1948 Lenoir, North Carolina) is an American composer of contemporary classical music.

Claude Baker attained a B.M. degree, magna cum laude, from East Carolina University in 1970. He subsequently studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler and Warren Benson, and holds M.M. (1973) and D.M.A. (1975) degrees from that institution.

He is currently Class of 1956 Chancellor's Professor of Composition in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is also the recipient of the university-wide Tracy M. Sonneborn Award for accomplishments in the areas of teaching and research. Prior to his appointment at Indiana, he served on the faculties of the University of Georgia and the University of Louisville, and was a Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music. In the eight-year period from 1991 to 1999, he held the position of Composer-in-Residence of the St. Louis Symphony, one of the longest such residencies with any major orchestra in the country. During this time, he initiated numerous community-based projects, the most notable of which was the establishment of composition programs at multiple grade levels in the St. Louis Public Schools. In recognition of his contributions to the cultural life of the city, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1999.

Among the many orchestras in addition to St. Louis that have commissioned and/or performed his music are those of San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Nashville, as well as the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfonica de RTV Española, the Orquesta Nacional de España, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, and the Staatskapelle Halle. Other ensembles include the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Esprit Orchestra, the Voices of Change, the American Modern Ensemble, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble, Ensemble ACJW, the Momenta String Quartet, and the Pacifica String Quartet (with pianist Ursula Oppens). His works are published by Lauren Keiser Music and Carl Fischer, and are recorded on the Naxos, ACA, Gasparo, Jeanné, IUMusic, TNC, and Louisville First Edition labels.

The professional honors he has received as a composer include an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards; a "Manuel de Falla" Prize from the Government of Spain; the Pogorzelski-Yankee Prize from the American Guild of Organists; the Eastman-Leonard and George Eastman Prizes; BMI-SCA and ASCAP awards; commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, and Meet the Composer (now, New Music USA); a Paul Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome; and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the state arts councils of Indiana, Kentucky and New York.