ERICA MUHL, professor of composition at the Thornton School, holds diplomas and degrees in composition from the American Conservatory in Paris, California State University—Northridge, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and USC. Her primary teachers at these institutions were Nadia Boulanger, Aurelio de la Vega, Franco Donatoni and James Hopkins. Through master classes and symposia she has worked with Joan Tower, William Kraft, John Harbison, Samuel Adler, Chinary Ung, Olly Wilson and George Crumb.

Dr. Muhl has served as composer-in-residence with the Minnesota Opera and has been assistant conductor with the Seattle Opera Association and Los Angeles Opera. She has been awarded residencies from, among others, the Charles Ives Center for American Music, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and the governments of Mexico and Venezuela. In 1993 she was the recipient of the prestigious Whitaker Commissioning Prize in conjunction with the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco. She has received grants and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Opera America, Italy's Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Meet the Composer Foundation, Rotary International Foundation and American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

Her works have been performed and broadcast by such noted organizations as Italy's Orchestra della Radio-Televisione Italiana (RAI), Venezuela's Orquesta Filarmonica Nacional, New World Symphony, Colonial Symphony, Arditti Quartet, Cuarteto de la Ciudad de Mexico, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, National Public Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Mexico's Canal 22.