David Lang and Alvin Singleton to be Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Alvin Singleton and David Lang

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced that composers David Lang and Alvin Singleton will be among the nine new members inducted during its annual induction and award ceremony in mid-May. The Academy, which was established in 1904, strives to always maintain a membership of 250 Americans from the disciplines of art (including visual artists and architects), literature (including playwrights, poets, and writers of fiction and non-fiction), and music (composers from several genres). Membership is for life and new members from each discipline are only inducted when a member from that discipline dies. Only current members may nominate and elect new members. Since 1929, the Academy also maintains a foreign honorary membership of 75 writers, composers, painters, sculptors, and architects who have all the rights and privileges of membership except the right to vote. In 1983, the Academy established a further category of American honorary membership (which is also non-voting) to include Americans of great distinction in the arts whose work falls outside the traditional departments of Art, Literature, and Music; American honorary membership is currently capped at ten people.

In addition to Lang and Singleton, British composer Thomas Adès and Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg will be inducted as Foreign Honorary Members. Other new inductees include: American artists Robert Adams, Ann Hamilton, and Bill Jensen; American writers Wendell Berry, Ha Jin, Denis Johnson, and Tobias Wolff; foreign writers John Banville, Haruki Murakami, and Colm Tóibín; Japanese architect Toyo Ito; British painter Leon Kossoff; and American chef/restauranteur Alice Waters.
A complete list of current and past members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters is available on their website.

(—from the press release)