University of Washington Professor Huck Hodge and University of Missouri at Kansas City Professor Paul Rudy have been awarded the 2010 Rome Prize in Music. Hodge, a graduate of Columbia University, was awarded the Luciano Berio Rome Prize to compose two works: Augurios for ensemble and Scenes from Faust for symphonic wind ensemble. Rudy, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder, was awarded the Elliott Carter Rome Prize for his 2012 Stories Nos. 5-7 and a Saxophone Concerto for the jazz saxophonist Bobby Watson. Hot off the wires: The American Academy

Jennifer Higdon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto, written especially for her former student Hilary Hahn, was co-commissioned in 2009 by the Indianapolis, Toronto, and Baltimore symphony orchestras, as well as by the Curtis Institute of Music, where both Hahn and Higdon studied, and where Higdon has been a faculty member since 1994. They first met at Curtis where Higdon was Hahn’s professor of 20th-century music history. “I was overjoyed by this news,” Hilary said. “It was both artistically and intellectually rewarding to collaborate with Jennifer on this concerto, and she put so much energy into the work. She has been a wonderful

From the Pulitzer site: For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to “Violin Concerto” by Jennifer Higdon (Lawdon Press), premiered on February 6, 2009, in Indianapolis, IN, a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity . Finalists Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “String Quartet No. 3,” by Fred Lerdahl, premiered on December 8, 2009, in Cleveland, Ohio, a remarkable work that displays impeccable technical facility and palpable emotion; and “Steel Hammer,” by Julia Wolfe (G. Schirmer, Inc.),