For Immediate Release
Composer Jeff Briggs Wins International Music Prizes for Excellence in Compositionfrom the National Academy of Music
(December, 2011) Jeffery Lynn Briggs has been awarded the 2011 International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition by the National Academy of Music for two pace-setting works:  Celebration - for Orchestra and 3rd String Quartet. 

Two other Briggs’ compositions: Ecliptic -3 pieces for Marimba Quartet and Two Poems of Hyam Plutzik - for Orator and Orchestra, were recognized by the Judges as award finalists. With four commendations, Briggs was the most highly lauded of 2011 winners, awarded from a pool of over 200 applicants reviewed by 1000 adjudicators.        

Celebration – for orchestra was premiered by New Jersey’s Westfield Symphony in 2010 and was conducted by David Wroe.  The 3rd String Quartet will be premiered by Florida International University’s professional Quartet (the Amernet) in Miami, in March 2012.  Two Poems of Hyam Plutzik, commissioned for the Centennial of American poet, will be performed in New York, in 2012.  Ecliptic has been twice performed by Vortex, the Percussion Ensemble at Vanderbilt University, conducted by Michael Holland, in 2010 and 2011.  
 
Dr. Jeffery L. Briggs attended the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music where he studied with Samuel Adler and Joseph Schwantner.  Graduate teachers included Donald Freund, Ben Johnston, David Liptak, and John Melby. Awards include the Bernard and Rose Sernaffsky, Louis Lane and Haimsohm Prizes for Musical Composition. Briggs was also the recipient of an ASCAP Young Composer Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2011 International Music Prize for Excellence in Music Composition by the National Academy of Music, with joint administrative offices in Colorado and Greece.
 
Jeff Briggs is widely admired for writing iconic computer game music including the well-known theme to Civilization, which has reached over 10 million game players, worldwide, that will be immortalized in a column in the game magazine, PC POWERPLAY, this Spring.  During a successful career as a computer game composer, designer, producer, and entrepreneur, Jeff received over 100 awards, and a US patent for a music composition engine. Briggs sold Firaxis Games to computer giant, Take Two Interactive, in 2005, to pursue his passion for concert music.