Bernard Rands (born 2 March
1934 in Sheffield, England) is a British-American contemporary classical
music composer. He studied music and English
literature at the University of Wales,
Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy.
He held residencies at Princeton University,
the University
of Illinois, and the University of York before
emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In
1984, Rands's Canti del Sole,
premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won
the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University
of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where
he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus. For his notable
students, See: List of
music students by teacher: R to S#Bernard Rands. Rands has received
many awards for his work, and was elected and inducted into The American
Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. From 1989 to 1995 he was
composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Rands's music is widely recorded. The recording of his Canti D'Amor by
the men's vocal ensemble Chanticleer won
a Grammy Award in 2000. Rands is married to American composer Augusta Read Thomas.