August 25, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.- Eric Sawyer, assistant professor of music at Amherst College, has received a 2004-05 ASCAPlus Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The award is based upon Sawyer's catalog of original compositions, as well as recent performances.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a performing rights organization whose primary purpose is to distribute royalties to its members based on an objective survey of various media. The ASCAPlus awards, given each year since 1960, reward writers whose works have a unique prestige value for which adequate compensation would not otherwise be received and to compensate those writers whose works are performed substantially in media not surveyed by ASCAP.
A member of the Amherst faculty since 2001, Sawyer received an A.B. degree in music from Harvard University in 1985, a M.A. in music composition from Columbia University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in music composition and theory from the University of California, Davis in 1994. Sawyer will release a compact disc of recent chamber music through Albany Records next year.
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