Michael Daugherty

Noted contemporary classical composer Michael Daugherty of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition today for his piece "Deus ex Machina." An album containing that piece and another Daugherty work also won two more awards.

Recorded by the Nashville Symphony with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero on the respected Naxos label, the album pairs "Deus ex Machina" with Daugherty's "Metropolis Symphony," a well-known work inspired by the Superman character. The Daugherty/Nashville Symphony album won the Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance.

In an odd twist, the recording also tied for Best Engineered Album, Classical, with another album with a local tie: The other winner was "Quincy Porter: The Complete Viola Works," by Eliesha Nelson and the Northwest Sinfonia and conducted by John McLaughlin Williams, a previous Grammy Award winner who also lives in Ann Arbor.

Mark Donahue, John Hill and Dirk Sobotka were the winning engineers on the Daugherty album, while Leslie Ann Jones, Kory Kruckenberg, Brandie Lane and David Sabee engineered the Porter/Williams album.

Both those albums had been up for a couple other honors, including a nomination for Best Classical Album for the Daugherty recording.

In yet another win with a local angle, David Frost took home the Grammy for classical producer of the year. His nominated body of work includes a recording of "The Old Burying Ground," a work composed by the University of Michigan's Evan Chambers and performed by Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra.

Although Daugherty has numerous other honors on his resume, this is his first Grammy Award, and he was at the ceremony in Los Angeles to accept it in person.

"I am incredibly excited and honored to be recognized by the Grammys," Daugherty said in a text message. "I owe so much to all the fantastic musicians I have worked with over the years and those who taught me music as I was growing up back in Cedar Rapids, IA.

"Finally, it shows again what a inspiring place Ann Arbor is to live for an artist to live and create music what a great place the University of Michigan is to teach young composers — who very well may be here to accept their Grammy someday!"

While Daugherty's "Metropolis Symphony" is one of his better-known and often-performed works over the last 20 years, "Deus ex Machina" is newer, dating from 2007. It "was commissioned by a consortium of the Charlotte, Nashville, New Jersey, Rochester and Syracuse Symphony Orchestras," Daugherty wrote on his website. "The title Deus ex Machina refers to the Latin phrase, 'god from the machine.' Each of the three movements of the piano concerto is a musical response to the world of trains."

The Nashville Symphony recording was made in 2009, with Daugherty on hand. The Nashville project was the first recording of “Deus ex Machina.”

The recording is widely available, both on CD and digitally via Amazon.com, as well as iTunes and the Naxos website.

Listen to a podcast from the Nashville Symphony on the music of Michael Daugherty

An Iowa native, Daugherty holds a doctorate from Yale University. He has been on the University of Michigan faculty since 1991. A full biography is available on his U-M faculty website. Last fall, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra featured a Daugherty work as part of a special "Made in Michigan" program.

The Grammy Awards are the top honors in the recording industry. A full list of Grammy nominees is on the Grammy website. (The classical nominees are toward the end of the list.)

While the bulk of the 109 categories in the Grammy Awards were awarded this afternoon/evening, the higher-profile pop music categories will be announced during a live TV broadcast, starting at 8 tonight on CBS. Names of the winners of the pre-broadcast categories are usually flashed briefly on screen.

A work by another U-M composer, William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and Of Experience," won four Grammy Awards in 2006.