Professors Receive Music Awards

University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa music professors Donald Womack and Byron Yasui were awarded the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers‘ (ASCAP) ASCAPLUS Standard Awards.

A faculty member since 1994, Womack is associate professor and chair of music composition and theory at UH M_noa. He holds a doctorate and master‘s degree in composition from Northwestern University, and bachelor‘s degrees in philosophy and music theory from Furman University. He has participated in festivals such as the June in Buffalo Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Conservatoire Americain in Fountainbleau, France. His music has been performed throughout North America, Europe, South America, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and is published by C.F. Peters Corporation.

Yasui has been on the music theory/composition faculty at UH Manoa since 1972, and presently chairs graduate studies in music. He is co-founder and artistic director of the University‘s Hawaii Guitar Festival. He holds a doctorate and master‘s degree in composition from Northwestern University, and a bachelor‘s of education degree in secondary music from UH Manoa. He is currently active as a freelance jazz double bassist, part-time double bassist with the Honolulu Symphony, and a classical guitar duo partner with Brazilian virtuoso Carlos Barboso-Lima. He has served as region VII co-chair of the Society of Composers, Inc., and is currently serving a second five-year term on the Honolulu Mayor‘s Commission of Culture and the Arts. Since 1985, he has annually received the ASCAP Standard Awards in serious music composition and has had two orchestral works premiered at Carnegie Hall.

Approximately $2.2 million in cash awards for 2001-2002 has been made to writer members of ASCAP by the Society‘s awards panel, and is based upon the unique prestige value of each writer‘s catalog of original compositions as well as recent performances of those works in areas not surveyed by the Society.