SHORT TAKES : Joan Tower Wins Music Award

New York musician Joan Tower was named Tuesday as 1990 recipient of the $150,000 Grawemeyer Award for Original Music Composition by the University of Louisville. Tower, a 52-year-old music professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is the first woman and native-born American chosen for the 6-year-old prize named for retired industrialist Charles Grawemeyer, the university said. Previous winners have been from Britain, Germany, Cambodia and Romania.

Tower was honored for the 22-minute orchestral piece “Silver Ladders” composed in 1985 for conductor Leonard Slatkin while in residence with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as pianist and percussionist.