William Bolcom

William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize and three Grammy Awards. Bolcom is a professor of music composition at the University of Michigan. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.

Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington. At the age of 11, he entered the University of Washington to study composition privately with George Fredrick McKay and John Verall and piano with Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson. He later studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College while working on his Master of Arts degree, with Leland Smith at Stanford University while working on his D.M.A., and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2éme Prix de Composition.

Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano. In the fall of 1994, he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, a position which he still holds.