College of Fine Arts alumnus Narong Prangcharoen, M.M. ’02, has been chosen as a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow in the category of Creative Arts-Music Composition.
The music of Prangcharoen, a Thai composer, has been called “absolutely captivating” (Chicago Sun-Times). Prangcharoen has established an international reputation and is recognized as one of Asia’s leading composers. He has received many international prizes, including the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, the Alexander Zemlinsky International Composition Competition Prize, the 18th ACL Yoshiro IRINO Memorial Composition Award, the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Competition Prize, and the Annapolis Charter 300 International Composers Competition Prize. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award. Recently, he has won the 20th Annual American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Commission and the Audience Choice Award.
In addition to working as a freelance composer, he is currently teaching at the Community Music and Dance Academy of the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri, Kansas City. Prangcharoen is the founder of the Thailand International Composition Festival in Thailand.
