Michael Daugherty is considered among the Top 10 most performed American composers of concert music today. This podcast details three of his orchestral works that cement this status. Each was inspired by a larger-than-life American cultural figure—the author Ernest Hemingway, the artist Grant Wood and Randolph Hearst, who headed an extensive journalistic empire in the late 19th century. The orchestral colors that Daugherty achieves to reflect such diverse sources of inspiration confirm his continued mastery of the medium.