Composer Kevin Puts received the Pulitzer Prize for music for his debut opera, Silent Night, in 2012. He also received many other top composition prizes, and is a noted educator, first at the University of Texas, then at the Peabody Institute. In the late '90s, he began to attract commissions from major organizations, primarily for orchestral works. In the late 2000s, Puts served as composer-in-residence of the Fort Worth Symphony and composed a violin concerto for its concertmaster, Michael Shih; other concertos quickly followed for other artists. Perhaps Puts' best-known work is Silent Night, which took the 1914 Christmas Truce during World War I as its subject. By the early 2020s, some 30 of Puts' compositions had been recorded.