Myra Melford Wins $75,000 Alpert Award in the Arts

Myra Melford Wins $75,000 Alpert Award in the Arts

Melford has been honored with the award “for her ascending and expansive trajectory, and great, generous musical mind.”

Written By

NewMusicBox Staff

Myra Melford - Photo by Valerie Truchhia

Myra Melford – Photo by Valerie Truchhia

Myra Melford has been named one of five 2012 winners of the 18th annual Alpert Award in the Arts. The award, which “recognizes past performance and future promise,” includes a prize of $75,000. In addition to Melford, the 2012 winners are Nora Chipaumire (dance), Eisa Davis (theatre), Kevin Everson, (film/video), and Michael Smith (visual arts).

Herb Alpert, the legendary musician and artist who created the Herb Alpert Foundation with his wife Lani Hall and gave the first Alpert Award in the Arts in 1995, says, “All of this year’s winners represent the essence of the Alpert Award. They take aesthetic, intellectual and political risks, and challenge worn-out conventions. They’re unafraid of the unknown.”

According to Irene Borger, director of the Alpert Award in the Arts, Melford has been honored with the award “for her ascending and expansive trajectory, and great, generous musical mind. They celebrate her willingness to dive into the deep end of the pool and her ability to take multiple musical traditions into another sphere.”

This year’s panelists include Alma Guillermoprieto, contributor to The New Yorker; Romi Crawford, Associate Professor, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; David Wessel, Professor of Music and Director, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at University of California, Berkeley; Daniel Alexander Jones, Head of the Playwriting Program; Acting and Theatre History Faculty, Fordham University; and David Joselit, Carnegie Professor, History of Art, Yale University.

The Alpert Award in the Arts recipients will receive their awards at a brunch today at the Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica.

(—from the press release)