Composer Nancy Van de Vate was a prolific figure who lived and worked for much of her life in Austria. She was best known for her work in larger forms, such as opera and orchestral music. Van de Vate was born Nancy Jean Hayes in Plainfield, New Jersey, on December 30, 1930. She attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, studying piano, and Wellesley College in Massachusetts, studying music theory. In 1952, she married Dwight Van de Vate Jr., with whom she had three children; the couple later divorced, and she married Clyde A. Smith, who worked with her to found the Vienna Modern Masters record label. Switching to composition, she took graduate degrees in that field at the University of Mississippi and Florida State University, where she earned a PhD. Van de Vate went on for further studies in electronic music at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire. Her Adagio for orchestra was performed in 1958. She sometimes used the pseudonyms Helen Huntley and William Huntley. From 1964 to 1966, Van de Vate taught at Memphis State University, also playing viola in the Knoxville Symphony and founding a Tennessee chapter of the National Organization for Women. In 1975, she founded the League of Women Composers. She taught at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville College, Maryville College, the Univerity of Hawaii, and, from 1977 to 1980, at Hawaii Loa College. Becoming interested in Asian music, she moved to Indonesia in 1982, where she taught at the Jakarta Conservatory. In 1985, she moved to Vienna, Austria, where she would live for the rest of her life; she taught at the Institute for European Studies, where she served as composer-in-residence in 2010. Van de Vate wrote music in various genres, but she gravitated toward larger forms. She composed seven operas, including the antiwar All Quiet on the Western Front, which had its premiere at the New York City Opera in 2003. Three of her operas, including Hamlet (2009), were in English, three were in German, and one, The Death of the Hired Man ("Der Tod des Tagelöhners"), based on a long poem by Robert Frost, exists in versions in both languages. Van de Vate was a prolific composer of orchestral music; Chernobyl (1987), written in response to the Ukrainian nuclear disaster, and the Kraków Concerto for percussion and orchestra (1988) were two of her better-known works. She also wrote string chamber music, choral music, and a few works for keyboard. Van de Vate garnered several Pulitzer Prize nominations, and her music was performed in the U.S. and Britain as well as in Austria. She died in Vienna on July 29, 2023. By that time, more than 35 works had been recorded. ~ James Manheim, Rovi