Jacobs School of Music

Eugene O'Brien is the recipient of the Rome prize of the American Academy in Rome and the Academy Award in Music of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as awards from BMI, ASCAP, and the League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music. He has received Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Fullbright, National Endowment for the Arts, and other fellowships, and has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Serge Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Meet-the-Composer/Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, and many American and European performers and ensembles. Also active in the promotion and performance of new music, he co-founded the Cleveland-based new music ensemble Reconnaissance in 1978 and was director of the group until 1984. He received his degrees from the University of Nebraska and the Cleveland Institute of Music/Case Western Reserve University, and undertook post-graduate studies at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany.