Michael Bednarek · CC0

Composed Symphony No. 1 (1990), one of the first major orchestral works to confront the AIDS epidemic directly, memorializing friends and colleagues lost to it in a piece that became a landmark of the American concert repertoire. He later won an Academy Award for scoring The Red Violin (1997) and adapted it into a violin concerto for Joshua Bell, adding to a body of work that has also won a Pulitzer Prize and five Grammy Awards across more than a hundred compositions.