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(also under the name Scheidel-Austin) Born in Baltimore in 1938, Elizabeth R. Austin (BMI) received her early musical training at The Peabody Conservatory. Grace N. Cushman (Junior Conservatory, Peabody) provided the thorough grounding in Musicianship, which marks Dr. Austin’s musical life. When Nadia Boulanger visited Goucher College (Towson, MD), she awarded the student composer a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France, after hearing Austin’s Drei Rilke Lieder. Elizabeth R. Austin has taught composition and theory at various music institutions in Hartford, Connecticut. Her association with the Hartt School (University of Hartford), where she earned an M.M. while on the faculty, included the establishment of a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim. While studying for her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, Elizabeth Austin won First Prize in the Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition (Nashville) for her Klavier Double for piano and tape. As a result of this, her ongoing collaboration with pianist Jerome Reed, Nashville, has engendered many recordings and commissions. Other awards have included a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant, selection by GEDOK (Society of Women Artists in German-speaking countries) to represent the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen region in the national seventieth-year anniversary exhibition in Lübeck, and First Prize in the IAWM’s 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition (for Homage for Hildegard [von Bingen]. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded her a month-long residency at Bellagio, Italy in 2001. Performed in major cities in Europe, Scandinavia, South Africa, as well as in The United States and The Caribbean, Elizabeth Austin’s music has been received with distinction and critical acclaim This music was the subject of an interview with Bruce Duffie, New Music Connoisseur, Spring, 2003. She has had her music featured on the ACA website, as well as its being broadcast worldwide. In particular, Germany’s Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, has promoted her music, with the Leipzig pianist Ulrich Urban, both over the air as well as in the Gewandhaus. Dr. Austin and her husband, Prof. Gerhard Austin have promoted many transatlantic cultural exchanges. One such project involved an exchange of composers between Rheinsberg and Connecticut; similar exchanges took place between Weimar, Zepernick (Berlin) and Connecticut. At present, Dr. Austin is organist/choir director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Windham Center. She serves on the Alumni Board of The Walden School (for young composers), New Hampshire. She is President of Connecticut Composers, Inc. and a member of The American Composers Alliance. Published by Arsis Press and Tonger Musikverlag (Germany) and recorded on the Capstone and Leonarda labels, Elizabeth Austin is also represented on the 1994 Society of Composers CD and Journal (Vol. 20). Her scores are available through the American Composers Alliance and through her. In the IAWM Journal, Volume 7, 2001, her music is the subject of an interview/article. Her piano music is cited in the Internationales chronologisches Lexikon Klaviermusik (Hollfelder). Dr. Teresa Crane, U. Illinois, wrote a dissertation on her song cycles (2007), as Karianne Westfal-Larsen discussed her songs in her Master’s thesis (Norway, 2008). Scarecrow Press has released the book, WOMEN OF INFLUENCE IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: NINE AMERICAN COMPOSERS, edited by Michael K. Slayton, who wrote the chapter on Austin’s life and music. The online journal SCOPE (Jan., 2011)has an article, "Composer-in-Waiting", also on Austin's music.