Aruán Ortiz receives major award from American Academy of Arts and Letters!

Pianist and composer Aruán Ortiz is one of two “composers of extraordinary gifts” awarded with the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Composer Shawn Okpebholo also received this fellowship as part of the 2025 Awards in Music honoring 17 established and emerging composers.

“I am humbled and honored to be chosen for this award,” says Ortiz. “The American Academy of Arts and Letters is such an important organization and to be recognized in this way by some of the most esteemed and accomplished musicians in our nation is hugely inspiring.”

Since 1942, music awards have been selected annually by Arts and Letters members to recognize and support fellow artists. The 300 members nominate candidates for the awards, and a rotating committee of composers selects the winners. This year, the award committee members were Christopher Theofanidis (chair), Libby Larsen, Annea Lockwood, Shulamit Ran, David Sanford, Wadada Leo Smith, and Melinda Wagner.

The music awards will be presented alongside the architecture, art, and literature awards at the American Academy of Arts and Letters’s annual Ceremonial in May.

Aruán Ortiz
Aruán Ortiz is an award-winning composer and pianist whose work seamlessly blends contemporary classical music, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, Latin Jazz, spontaneous composition, and improvisation. Recognized as “one of the most creative and original composers in the world” (The Art Music Lounge), Ortiz has received prestigious honors, including the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Impact Award (2014), and the 2024 Hermitage Fellowship. His compositions span chamber ensembles, orchestras, dance companies, and film, continuously pushing musical boundaries while embodying and redefining the intersection of contemporary classical, creative music and Afro-diasporic traditions.
Ortiz's multidisciplinary artistic vision has led to the premiere of projects such as Reimagining Tropiques: Then and Now at Constellation in Chicago (2024), Flamenco Criollo at the Flamenco Biënnale Nederland (2021), and Pastor’s Paradox at the Latino Theater in Dallas (2022). He has released several albums with Intakt Records, including his solo effort Cub(an)ism (2017), awarded five stars by DownBeat Magazine, and Inside Rhythmic Falls (2020), featuring master drummer Andrew Cyrille, praised as “a narrative of deep human emotion” (Morning Star Online).
His works have been performed internationally at renowned venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, and Southbank Centre (UK). Key chamber works include Episodes in an Unforeseen Departure (2023), premiered by the Harlem Chamber Players at the Schomburg Center, and Piedras de Ida y Vuelta (2023), commissioned by the Contemporary Music Ensemble Ipse. Ortiz’s music is lauded for its structural complexity and its innovative fusion of serialism, aleatory techniques, and avant-garde improvisation.

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Note:The bestselling book "The Bible of Latin Jazz" by writer, musicologist, and educator Luis Raul Montell is available on Amazon.