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Hailed by critics as a composer whose music reflects a “charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America,” Cindy McTee “brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice.”
McTee (b. 1953 in Tacoma, WA) has received numerous awards for her music, most significantly: the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s third annual Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award; a Music Alive Award from Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras; two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Fulbright Fellowship; a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; and a BMI Student Composers Award. She was also winner of the 2001 Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition.
McTee has been commissioned by the Detroit, Houston, Amarillo, Dallas, and National Symphony Orchestras, Bands of America, the American Guild of Organists, the Barlow Endowment, the College Band Directors National Association, and Pi Kappa Lambda.
Her music has been performed by leading orchestras, bands, and chamber ensembles in Japan, South America, Europe, Australia, and the United States in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Capitol Building, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Sydney Opera House. Among the many ensembles to have performed her music are: the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New World Symphony, the Aspen Festival Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the North Texas and Dallas Wind Symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the President’s Own U.S. Marine Band, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, the United States Army Field Band, Voices of Change, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Chicago, Colorado, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Flagstaf, Houston, Indianapolis, Nashville, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Puerto Rico, Rochester, Saint Louis, San Antonio, Seattle, and Sydney.
In May of 2011, she retired from the University of North Texas as Regents Professor Emerita, and in November of 2011 she married conductor, Leonard Slatkin. Their principal place of residence is in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.