Indiana University has announced the appointment of nine scholars to the rank of Distinguished Professor. This is the highest academic rank at the university. One of the nine scholars named a Distinguished Professor is an African American.
Andre Watts is a professor of piano and holds the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at the Jacobs School of Music. He joined the faculty at Indiana University in 2004.
Having debuted with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the age of 16, Professor Watts has appeared with celebrated orchestras and conductors around the world. He won a Grammy Award in 1964 for the most promising new classical recording artist. When he was 26 years old, Watts received an honorary degree from Yale University, the youngest person to be so honored by the university. In 2011, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. In 2014, Professor Watts was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
