Tag: American Academy of Arts and Letters

A Week of New Music Celebrations: the BMI Student Composer Awards, the Ceremonial & the Underwood Readings

The 2019 BMI Student Composer Award winners with Deirdre Chadwick and Ellen Taaffee Zwilich (Photo by Amanda Stevens for BMI).

The close proximity of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial, and the American Composers Orchestra’s Underwood New Music Readings, which all took place in New York City last week, have turned the penultimate week of May into a multi-day celebration of new music.

On May 21, the BMI Foundation celebrated the nine winners of the 2019 BMI Student Composer Awards.

On May 21, the BMI Foundation, in collaboration with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), announced the nine winners of the 2019 BMI Student Composer Awards at a private ceremony held at Tribeca 360° presided over by BMI Executive Director of Classical and BMIF President Deirdre Chadwick, BMI Senior Vice President of International and Global Policy Ann Sweeney, and renowned American composer and permanent Chair of the Student Composer Awards Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Marco-Adrián Ramos Rodríguez received the William Schuman Prize, awarded for most outstanding score, and Lucy McKnight received the Carlos Surinach Prize, awarded to the youngest winner. Another one of the 2019 winners, Matthew Schultheis, received his third consecutive award this year. In what has now become an annual tradition, prior to the announcement of the award winners, an award-winning work from a previous year was performed in its entirety. The Aizuri Quartet performed Carrot Revolution composed by Gabriella Smith which received a BMI Student Composer Award in 2018.

Here is a complete list of the 2019 award winners:

Amelia Brey (b. 1994): Ar(i/e)as for wind quintet

Henri Colombat (b. 1997): Goûts égouttés… gouttes for brass dectet

Kevin Day (b. 1996): Havana for wind ensemble

Liam Kaplan (b. 1997): 8 Preludes for piano

Lucy McKnight (b. 1998): plunge for two violas, cello, two basses

Marco-Adrián Ramos Rodríguez (b. 1995): Toys in a Field for orchestra

Matthew Schultheis (b. 1997): The Temptation of Saint Anthony for chamber ensemble

Tyler Wayne Taylor (b. 1992): Liberation Compromise for 17 players

Anna-Louise Walton (b. 1991): Basket of Figs for flute, clarinet, and voice

Additionally, 18-year-old Katie Palka received an honorable mention for her composition Stolen Flight for string quartet.

Alexandra du Bois, Jeremy Gill, Shawn Jaeger, and David Schober served as preliminary panelists this year. The final judges were Kati Agócs, Donald Crockett, Stephen Jaffe, and Elena Ruehr. (More information about each of the 2019 award-winning composers and their works is available on the BMI website.)


Eighteen composers received awards during the 2019 American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial and three composers were inducted as new members.

On May 22, the annual American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial took place during which numerous awards were given to writers, visual artists, and composers and new members of the academy were inducted.

Composers Chen Yi and Meredith Monk were inducted as the newest music department academicians. In addition, Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, who was unable to attend, was inducted as a foreign honorary member.

Four Arts and Letters Awards in Music (formerly Academy Awards) of $10,000 each, plus another $10,000 toward the recording of one work, are given annually to acknowledge a composer who has arrived at his/her own voice. The 2019 awardees are David Fulmer, Stacy Garrop, Wynton Marsalis, and John Musto. Elizabeth Ogonek was the recipient of the 2019 Walter Hinrichsen Award, established by the C. F. Peters Corporation, which is given for the publication of a work by a mid-career American composer. Gity Razaz received the $10,000 Andrew Imbrie Award, which has been awarded annually since 2012 to a mid-career composer of demonstrated artistic merit. Christopher Cerrone and Reinaldo Moya were the two 2019 recipients of the annually awarded $15,000 Charles Ives Fellowships which are awarded to young composers of extraordinary gifts. In addition, $7500 Charles Ives Scholarships were awarded to six composers—Ryan Lindveit, Sato Matsui, Paul Mortilla, Tanner Porter, Marco-Adrián Ramos Rodríguez (BMI’s 2019 William Schuman Prize winner), and Miles Walter—for continued study in composition, either at institutions of their choice or privately with distinguished composers. Two Goddard Lieberson Fellowships of $15,000, which are given annually to young composers of extraordinary gifts, were awarded to Travis Alford and Daniel Bernard Roumain. Finally, two musicals received 2019 Richard Rodgers Awards for Musical Theater: Bhangin’ It by Sam Willmott (music and lyrics), Mike Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza (book); and The Lucky Ones by Abigail and Shaun Bengson who wrote the music and lyrics and also co-wrote the book with Sarah Gancher.

In addition, composer David Del Tredici delivered this year’s Blashfield Address, a speech toward the end of the award announcements which is a hallmark of the Ceremonial. Del Tredici’s talk, “The Gift of Gayness: A Tell-All,” was provocative, heartfelt, and often extremely funny.

(A complete list of the American Academy of Arts and Letter’s 2019 award recipients in every discipline is available on the Arts and Letters website.)


Six composers were featured in the 2019 American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, three of whom have received commissions to write new works for ACO.

Finally, on May 23 and 24, American Composers Orchestra, under the direction of Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot, read through works by six composers during the 28th Annual Underwood New Music Readings at New York University’s Frederick Loewe Theater. The six composers and their works are:

Rodrigo Castro (b. 1985): La gaviota – Essay No. 1 for Orchestra
Chen Yihan (b. 1994): Spiritus
inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993): Symphony for the Body
Jack Hughes (b. 1992): Needlepoint
Jihyun Kim (b. 1989): A Tramp in the Assembly Line
Aaron Israel Levin (b. 1995): In Between

Following the readings, three of the composers received commissions for new works that will be performed on future ACO concerts: Jack Hughes received the 2019 Underwood Commission, Aaron Israel Levin received the 2019 Audience Choice Commission, and Jihyun Kim received the Consortium for Emerging Composers Commission. The Underwood Commission was chosen by the mentor composers and the conductor. The Audience Choice Commission, which is now in its 10th year, was determined by paper ballot at the run-through performance on May 24. The new Consortium Commission was chosen by ACO Leadership and Alabama Symphony Orchestra/American Youth Symphony Music Director Carlos Izcaray and the resulting work will be performed by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and American Youth Symphony (Los Angeles) in addition to ACO.

Jack Hughes, Aaron Israel Levin, and Jihyun Kim. (Photos courtesy American Composers Orchestra)

Jack Hughes, Aaron Israel Levin, and Jihyun Kim. (Photos courtesy American Composers Orchestra)

(More information about the 2019 Underwood New Music Readings and the six composers being featured this year is available on the American Composers Orchestra website.)

Celebrating New Music Awards Week

It has been a week of non-stop new music-related celebrations in New York City this week. Fresh from our own NewMusicBox LIVE and New Music USA Benefit Evening (thanks again to everyone who joined us), we now have time to report on some of the other highlights.

The top half of a BMI Student Composer Award plaque

On Monday, May 18, the BMI Foundation in collaboration with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) announced the winners of the 63rd annual BMI Student Composer Awards. The awards were presented by BMI President Mike O’Neill, BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick, and composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (who serves as the permanent chair of the Student Composer Awards) in a private ceremony at the JW Marriott Essex House Hotel, a lavish Art Deco space facing Central Park that was built in 1931. There were a total of nine awardees who received scholarship grants to be applied toward their musical education totaling $20,000. There were also two honorable mentions, which has happened rarely in the history of these awards.

Mike O’Neill standa at a podium as Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Deirdre Chadwick sit to his left.

BMI President Mike O’Neill (right) welcomes attendees as composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (left) and BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick prepare to announce the award winners.

Two composers—Max Michael Grafe and Daniel Silliman—tied for the William Schuman Prize, which is awarded to the most outstanding score among the submissions. Grafe and Silliman chatted with us and each other about sharing this honor.

(Later in the week, Silliman’s award-winning work, strain for cello and orchestra, received an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award and Grafe received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. More on those award ceremonies below.)

More than 700 online applications were submitted to the competition from student composers throughout the Western Hemisphere in 2015. One of the 2015 winners, Tonia Ko, described her steadfastness in applying for this highly competitive prize. She told us that she has been submitting scores for ten consecutive years; it finally paid off.

Another awardee, Joseph Meland, described the genre-defying piece he submitted that fetched a prize, a composition for chamber orchestra and rock band; Meland feels equally comfortable in both idioms.

The jury members for the 2015 competition were Matthias Pintscher, José Serebrier, Joan Tower, and Barbara White. Alexandra du Bois, Hannah Lash, David Leisner, and Sean Shepherd served as preliminary judges. Below is a list of all the 2015 BMI Student Composer Awardees and their award-winning compositions.

Matthew Aaron Browne (b. 1988): Barnstorming Season for symphony orchestra
Max Michael Grafe (b. 1988): Kheir for clarinet and sinfonietta
Tonia Ko (b. 1988): Blue Skin of the Sea for solo marimba
Thomas Kotcheff (b. 1988): that in shadow or moonlight rises for mixed octet
Joseph Meland (b. 1993): FAUVE for chamber orchestra and rock band
Avik Sarkar (b. 2001): Mirror for chamber symphony
Daniel Silliman (b. 1993): strain for cello and orchestra
Patricia Wallinga (b. 1994): Dreams in War Time for tenor voice and piano
Benjamin P. Wenzelberg (b. 2000): Maelström for orchestra

Sarkar additionally received the Carlos Surinach Prize, an annual award given to the youngest winner in the competition. Imágenes de Guanajuato, a composition for cello and guitar by Luis M. Ruelas Romo, a 23-year-old student at New England Conservatory, and Prelude and Tricotee for violin and piano by Lauren Vandervelden, a 15-year-old private music student in Boise, Idaho, received honorable mention. (Sarkar and Vandervelden’s pieces also received Honorable Mention in the 2015 Morton Gould Awards.)

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As they have done annually since 1942, academicians and award recipients sit on the stage of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Auditorium awaiting the commencement of the Ceremonial.

As they have done annually since 1942, academicians and award recipients sit on the stage of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Auditorium awaiting the commencement of the Ceremonial.

On Wednesday, May 20, the American Academy of Arts and Letters held its Ceremonial in the 730-seat auditorium of the second of the three landmarked Beaux Arts buildings it owns in northern Manhattan. An annual tradition since 1942 (the very first ceremonial took place in 1941 on the main stage of Carnegie Hall but it has taken place in their own 156th Street space since the year following), the event is one of the few times in American cultural life that visual artists, poets, novelists, and composers share a stage to honor achievements in a broad range of disciplines. And the reception following the Ceremonial, which—when it’s not raining, and sometimes even when it is (luckily for once it wasn’t!)—is one of the great spring parties in New York City, was a great opportunity for people across disciplines and generations to connect with one another.

The official seal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

The coming together of these disparate artistic practices felt even more meaningful during this year’s event because several of the awards in one discipline were announced by practitioners of other disciplines; this was perhaps most poignant when composer John Harbison presented a Gold Medal, the Academy’s highest honor, to poet Louise Glück, whose verse he has set to music three times thus far–in one of the movements of his Symphony No. 5 for soprano, baritone, and orchestra (2007), The Seven Ages for mezzo-soprano and Pierrot sextet (2008), and most recently in his 2013 composition Crossroads for soprano, oboe, and strings. Composer Yehudi Wyner, who is the academy’s current president, described how difficult it has been to build bridges between the artistic disciplines but stated that it is something the academy has been steadfast in its efforts to do.

Although most of the awards that were given out during the course of the Ceremonial have already been announced, it still feels like a complete surprise to Scott Johnson, who received one of this year’s two Goddard Lieberson Fellowships in Music. He even wore a tie for the occasion!

It is certainly far from anti-climactic for the winners to share the stage with their counterparts in other fields as well as with many of the 250 celebrated composers, writers, and visual artists who comprise the academy’s membership, as composer/pianist Billy Childs, one of four winners of a 2015 Arts and Letters Award in Music, told us:

Another one of the winners, Erin Gee, one of two 2015 recipients of the Charles Ives Fellowship, described how being amidst people involved in so many different kinds of creative endeavors is really inspirational:

Although Emily Cooley, one of six Charles Ives Scholarship recipients, was disappointed that two of her favorite authors, who are members of the academy, were unable to attend this year and so she did not have a chance to meet them:

These awards, however, are much more than an opportunity to hob-nob with luminaries. They also offer important financial support to emerging artists for whom finding a balance between creative work and economic sustenance is frequently a challenge, as Alex Mincek, recipient of the Benjamin H. Danks Award in Music, pointed out:

But aside from how valuable these awards are to emerging and mid-career composers, writers, and visual artists, both in terms of offering peer validation and significant monetary support, they are a rare opportunity to honor achievements from practitioners from many different generations. The academy’s most significant award for an éminence grise, the Gold Medal, two of which are given each year to people who have already been inducted among the 250 Academicians as an honorific, is one of the ways that the academy attempts to establish a continuity between emerging and established creators. In addition to awarding Louise Glück the Gold Medal for Poetry, the academy awarded a Gold Medal in Music to composer George Crumb, who at 85 remains a vital force. Even though he has already received so many important accolades throughout his illustrious career, Crumb seemed genuinely exuberant in response to the academy’s recognition:

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The stage of Merkin Concert Hall with a screen projecting "2015 ASCAP Concert Music Awards" and some people in the audience.

The stage is set for the opening of the 2015 ASCAP Concert Music Awards at Merkin Concert Hall.

Finally, ASCAP presented its 16th annual Concert Music Awards on the stage of Merkin Concert Hall on Thursday, May 21. The centerpiece of the ceremony was the formal presentation—by composers Charles Fussell, James Matheson, Lisa Bielewa, and Paul Moravec along with ASCAP’s Cia Toscanini and Michael Spudic—of the 2015 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards which were announced in March (and can be found here). Brief excerpts from recordings of award-winning pieces by each of the composers who were present were played.

We spoke with several of the composers who were in attendance about their award-winning compositions. Scott Lee from Durham, North Carolina, and Paris Lavidis from New York City, described their very different approaches—Lee, in his Bottom Heavy for small ensemble, incorporates hip-hop grooves and other popular music elements whereas Lavidis explores extended techniques in what he describes as a “semi-tonal realm” in his String Quartet No. 2:

Anahita Abbasi, who was born in Iran and is now based in San Diego, described the structure of her composition Distorted Attitudes II/Labyrinth for flute (doubling on piccolo and bass flute), soprano saxophone, bassoon, two violins, cello, and doublebass:

Composer, singer-songwriter, and classical and jazz pianist Gabriel Zucker described spending more than a year creating Evergreen, an evening-length work which he also just recorded for future release:

After opening remarks from the afternoon’s master of ceremonies, composer, conductor and radio broadcast journalist Bill McGlaughlin, ASCAP’s new CEO Elizabeth Matthews, and John Titta, ASCAP’s executive vice president of creative services, composer Alex Shapiro presented J. P. Redmond with the Charlotte V. Bergen Scholarship, which has been awarded annually since 2006 to the top ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer age 18 or under. Redmond then went over to the piano to play the third movement of the work for which he received the award, Northeastern Sonata.

James Kendrick, president of Schott/European American Music, presented Brian Heim with this year’s Leo Kaplan Award, which has been given annually since 1995 to the composer of the score judged “most outstanding” in ASCAP’s Young Composer Awards. Heim’s award-winning piece, Two Portraits After Moby Dick, was inspired by the classic Herman Melville novel as he explained to us:

In addition to all of the awards presented to the emerging composers, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), now in their 10th anniversary season, was honored by composer and former Manhattan School of Music President Robert Sirota for “the virtuosity, passion, and commitment with which they perform and champion American composers.” Composer Timo Andres joined four of the members of ACME—Ben Russell and Caroline Shaw (violins), Caleb Burhans (viola), and ACME’s artistic director Clarice Jensen (cello)—for a performance of Andres’s Piano Quintet, another one of the Morton Gould award-winning pieces. We spoke briefly with cellist Jensen outside Merkin Hall:

Finally, Julia Wolfe was honored by retired ASCAP Vice President for Concert Music and current ASCAP consultant Frances Richard for being awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music as well as the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Wolfe spoke with us briefly about how much she enjoys sharing the stage with all these young composers:

20 Composers Honored at American Academy Ceremonial

Murakami's Induction to the Amreican Academy of Arts and Letters

Nearly every year at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, new members are inducted in from the fields of art, literature, and music. In addition, the academy also inducts honorary members–either Americans working in fields outside of art, literature, and music or foreign honorary members working in those fields. Among the 2014 honorary inductees were chef Alice Waters, who unfortunately could not attend, and the iconic Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami pictured here during his induction. (Sorry for the blurry photo, it was as close as I was able to get.) Unfortunately I was unable to find Murakami during the reception; I’m a huge fan–FJO

During the 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial, held on May 21, 2014, eighteen composers received awards in music totaling over $200,000. In addition, during the two-hour ceremony, composers David Lang and Alvin Singleton were officially inducted as members of the academy. As per tradition, the official ceremony was followed by a reception plus the official opening of the academy’s art exhibition (devoted to the work of the year’s awardees and inductees).

 


Joan Tower presented the four 2014 Arts and Letters Awards in Music, which honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. The cash award of $7500 is supplemented by an additional $7500 grant to help fund a recording of the composer’s work. The 2014 awardees are: Kati Agócs, Daron Hagen, Anthony Korf, and Marjorie Merryman.


Mario Davidovsky presented the Walter Hinrichsen Award to Scott Wheeler. The Hinrichson Award, established by the C. F. Peters Corporation in 1984, funds the publication of a work by a gifted composer. (Previous recipients of the award include Victoria Bond, Reena Esmail, Richard Festinger, Mark Gustavson, Jing Jing Luo, Louis Karchin, Paula Matthusen, Kurt Rohde, and Rand Steiger.) Tobias Picker presented the $10,000 Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in Music, for an exceptional mid-career composer, to Mikael Karlsson.

Stephen Hartke presented the two Goddard Lieberson Fellowships of $15,000 each to A. J. McCaffrey and Ju Ri Seo. The fellowship, given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts, is named in honor of composer Goddard Lieberson (1911-1977) who served as president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1951. It was endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation.
In 1970, composer Charles Ives’s widow, Harmony Ives, bequeathed to the academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the academy to annually give two Ives Fellowships, as well as six Ives Scholarships. Ellen Taaffe Zwilich presented the two Charles Ives Fellowships of $15,000 each to Nathan Shields and Dan Tepfer. Martin Bresnick presented the six $7500 Charles Ives Scholarships for composition students of great promise to William David Cooper, David Kirkland Garner, Bálint Karosi, Jeremy Podgursky, Daniel Schlosberg, and Nina C. Young.


The ongoing importance of Charles Ives’s legacy to the academy was acknowledged during the afternoon in other ways as well. Prior to the commencement of the ceremonial, Daniel Beckwith played a selection of Charles Ives’s compositions on the academy’s Skinner organ. (Though all-too-rarely performed nowadays, Ives wrote a considerable amount of organ music and, since he served as a church organist and performed his own music, these works are among the few compositions of his which were played during his lifetime. Surprisingly the first complete critical edition of all of Ives’s organ works was only published in 2012.) More significantly, the academy has reconstructed Ives’s personal compositional studio on its premises and opened the room for public viewing following the ceremonial.

Charles Ives's Composition Studio

The American Academy of Arts and Letters now devotes a room on its premises to Charles Ives’s composition studio, reconstructed as it was on the day he died.

Tania León presented the Richard Rodgers Award in Musical Theater to composer Matt Gould and librettist Griffin Matthews to fund a production of their musical Witness Uganda. The Richard Rodgers Awards were created and endowed by academy-member composer Richard Rodgers in 1978 for the development of the musical theater. These awards subsidize full productions, studio productions, and staged readings by nonprofit theaters in New York City of works by composers and writers who are not already established in this field. The winners are selected by a jury that includes both American Academy of Arts and Letters members and non-members. The Richard Rodgers Awards are the only awards for which the academy accepts applications.

Finally, a new award was unveiled during the 2014 ceremonial–the Virgil Thomson Award for Vocal Music. Poet and librettist J. D. McClatchy presented the inaugural award to Lowell Liebermann. The $40,000 award, endowed by the Virgil Thomson Foundation and administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, recognizes an American composer of vocal works. Liebermann was among five finalists selected from composers nominated by members of the academy. Their work was studied closely over the course of several months by a special jury comprised of McClatchy and composers David Del Tredici, Carlisle Floyd, Ezra Laderman, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Aside from the Rodgers and Thomson awards, candidates for the music awards were nominated by the 250 members of the academy and the winners were selected by a committee of academy members: Joan Tower (chair), Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Mario Davidovsky, John Harbison, Stephen Hartke, Tania León, and Tobias Picker.
A final reflection on the day from 2014 Ives Scholarship recipient Daniel Schlosberg:

Sixteen Composers Receive AAAL Awards Totaling $175,000

AAAL SealThe American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the sixteen recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $175,000.

Arts and Letters Awards in Music
Kati Agócs, Daron Hagen, Anthony Korf, and Marjorie Merryman will each receive a $7500 Arts and Letters Award in Music, which honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Each will receive an additional $7500 toward the recording of one work.

Walter Hinrichsen Award
Scott Wheeler will receive the Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of a work by a gifted composer. This award was established by the C. F. Peters Corporation, music publishers, in 1984.

Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Prize
Mikael Karlsson will receive the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Prize of $10,000 for an exceptional mid-career composer.

Goddard Lieberson Fellowships
Two Goddard Lieberson Fellowships of $15,000, endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation, are given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. This year they will go to A. J. McCaffrey and Ju Ri Seo.

Charles Ives Fellowships
Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the academy to give the Ives awards in composition since 1970. Two Charles Ives Fellowships, of $15,000 each, will be awarded to Nathan Shields and Dan Tepfer.

Charles Ives Scholarships
William David Cooper, David Kirkland Garner, Bálint Karosi, Jeremy Podgursky, Daniel Schlosberg, and Nina C. Young will receive Charles Ives Scholarships of $7500, given to composition students of great promise.

The winners were selected by a committee of academy members: Joan Tower (chairman), Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Mario Davidovsky, John Harbison, Stephen Hartke, Tania León, and Tobias Picker. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the academy.

The awards will be presented at the academy’s annual ceremonial in May.

(–from the press release)

Come Rain or Come Shine

2012 AAAL Ceremonial

A crowded audience and a crowded stage of American Academy of Arts and Letters member writers, composers, visual artists, and 2012 award recipients await the commencement of the 2012 Ceremonial.

Every year on the third Wednesday of May beginning at three o’clock in the afternoon, a group of prominent authors, visual artists, and composers gather together for several long hours to bestow numerous awards in their various disciplines. Afterward, there is an outdoor reception, usually held under a canopy amidst pouring rain. It is, nevertheless, one of the year’s most enjoyable schmoozefests. The format of the Ceremonial, the official name for this annual event held at the headquarters of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (located in a series of historic Audubon Terrace buildings in Northern Manhattan’s Washington Heights) is akin to a religious ritual and is pretty much exactly the same every year.

The script runs basically as follows: Right before the event officially begins, a photographer takes a seemingly interminable series of photos of the assembled Academy members and some of the year’s privileged awardees, who sit in rows on the stage (their names and positions on stage printed in a diagram handed to attendees with the program of the event). The presiding President of the Academy (a title which rotates between composers, writers, and artists every three years) commences the Ceremonial with a series of opening remarks. Then new members are inducted. (There are always 250 members who are inducted for life; someone has to die in order for someone new to be accepted in.) A slew of awards are doled out by various Academy members. (In years past, an award citation was read for each of the awardees which made the Ceremonial last nearly three hours; for the past several years most of these citations, which are all printed in the program distributed to attendees, are left unread—sometimes an award presenter forgets and reads the citation.) Toward the end of the proceedings, one of the members gives an extremely long speech (called the Blashfield Address, or as painter Chuck Close—this year’s speaker—called it, the “dreaded Blashfield Address”). A few additional higher profile awards are given, the final ones reserved for Academy inductees, before attendees are asked to reconvene at the reception.

For seasoned observers of this event, however, the 2012 edition had a few notable variations. It started more than 35 minutes later than usual. Pete Seeger (recipient of the 2012 Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts) carried a guitar and banjo onto the stage and used them both in his acceptance speech, getting people in the audience as well as many of the folks assembled on stage to sing along with him. (Among the combinations I noticed on stage were Tobias Picker sitting next to Salmon Rushdie, and Steve Reich sitting next to Gunther Schuller, although from where I was seated I couldn’t tell if any of them were singing.) It didn’t rain.


(NOTE: Apologies for the less than stellar video from the back row, but I think the audio more than makes up for it. I’m still floored by the sound quality of the audio on the late lamented FlipCam.)

As always, for new Academy inductees as well as the award winners, it is extremely thrilling to share the stage with so many artistic luminaries. This year’s new composer inductees were Stephen Jaffe and Tobias Picker (replacing Milton Babbitt and Peter Lieberson). In addition, the Academy inducted two honorary members from our field: Japanese composer Jo Kondo and American soprano Leontyne Price. (Honorary Members are inducted in order to honor distinguished either practitioners of writing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and musical composition not based in the United States or Americans whose accomplishments fall outside of the Academy’s acknowledged artistic categories. Current American honorary members include choreographers, film makers, and performers; the actress Meryl Streep, the only American honorary member in attendance at the 2012 Ceremonial, presented one of the awards.) During the reception, Academician Stephen Hartke waxed poetically about what it means to be a member of the august group.

For recipients of the Academy’s numerous awards, the honor is far more than monetary, although the financial element is substantial. This year the Academy awarded a total of $940,000, with $190,000 of that going to composers. On these pages we have previously reported all of the 2012 Academy music awards, so there is no need to enumerate every one of them here again. However, a few do merit some further commentary, since they demonstrate how these awards tie their winners to a long, illustrious history.

James Matheson is the latest recipient of the coveted Charles Ives Living Award. This award for an American composer, funded from royalties of the music of Charles Ives, frees its recipient from the need to devote time to any employment other than music composition; the sum is considerable. It currently is $100,000 a year for two years. But perhaps more significant than the large dollar amount affixed to it is the fact that this award, established in 1998, has only previously been given four times (to Martin Bresnick, Chen Yi, Stephen Hartke, and George Tsontakis). Also, it is a particularly poignant accolade considering that Ives’s day job in the insurance business prevented him from composing full time and that ultimately a breakdown resulting from his work as both a composer and businessman resulted in his near silence as a composer for the last thirty years of his life. Given that history, it would be difficult for a composer not to feel an enormous duty and commitment to the act of composing.

The royalties from Ives’s music, which were bequeathed to the Academy by Ives’s widow Harmony Ives, also fund various other awards including two Charles Ives Fellowships (of $15,000 each)—this year awarded to Haralabos Stafylakis and Xi Wang—and six Charles Ives Scholarships (each $7,500); the 2012 recipients of these are Niccolo Athens, Sean Friar, David Hertzberg, Takuma Itoh, Wang Jie, and Chris Rogerson. Wang Jie spoke of how these awards bearing Charles Ives’s name carry the weight of his legacy.

On the other hand, Haralabos Stafylakis, whose music is influenced by heavy metal, saw his winning the award as a victory for all metalheads, a musical demographic not normally acknowledged by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Other recipients this year are seasoned veterans of award winning. Steve Reich has honored with the Academy’s Gold Medal, its highest honor, which is given in turn to outstanding practitioners in all of the disciplines that the Academy acknowledges. But of course, Reich has already been honored with numerous accolades—from the Grammy to the Pulitzer, as well as the Polar Prize, which is the closest thing to a Nobel that a composer could aspire to. Still, Reich mused upon receiving the Gold Medal for Music that he is deeply honored to be not only in the company of previous music medalists such as Stravinsky and Copland, but also those in other disciplines which include his heroes Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and William Carlos Williams, whose poetry Reich set in his large scale composition, The Desert Music. Two other 2012 award-winning composers, Frank Ticheli and Paul Moravec, joked about how they both always win awards from the Academy at the same time.

A composer as successful as John Kander, whose credits include the blockbuster Broadway musicals Cabaret and Chicago, most likely doesn’t need the $5,000 he was given by the Academy as the 2012 recipient of its Marc Blitzstein Award. Yet the Academy’s acknowledgement of Kander’s accomplishments has been long overdue and it is appropriate to connect his provocative, socially conscious theatre scores to the legacy of the award’s namesake, whose legendary The Cradle Will Rock remains a humbling role model for anyone who strives to use art to respond to the injustices in our society. Although Chuck Close, in his often improvisatory-seeming address during the Ceremonial, perhaps had the best advice for aspiring artists: “Problem creation is much more interesting than problem solving.”

Close’s words certainly resonated deeply with me, despite my inevitably conflicted feelings about the Ceremonial. Like many others, I wish that the Academy acknowledged a broader range of creators than it currently does. At the same time, the Academy remains one of the few institutions in this country where writers, visual artists, and composers can share the limelight and for that I remain not only extremely grateful, but willing to attend the ritual year after year, rain or shine.

Eighteen Composers Receive AAAL Awards Totaling $190,000

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the eighteen recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $190,000. The winners were selected by a committee of academy members: Ezra Laderman (chairman), David Del Tredici, John Harbison, Fred Lerdahl, Tania Leon, Bernard Rands, Gunther Schuller, and Steven Stucky.

The awards will be presented at the academy’s annual ceremonial in May. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 250 members of the academy.

ARTS AND LETTERS AWARDS IN MUSIC

Four composers will each receive a $7500 Arts and Letters Award in Music, which honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Each will receive an additional $7500 toward the recording of one work. The winners are Paul Moravec, Frank Ticheli, Dan Welcher, and John Zorn.

WALTER HINRICHSEN AWARD

Reena Esmail will receive the Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of a work by a gifted composer. This award was established by the C. F. Peters Corporation, music publishers, in 1984.

ANDREW IMBRIE AWARD

Louis Karchin will receive the $10,000 Andrew Imbrie Award in Music. This award, being inaugurated this year, is given to a composer of demonstrated artistic merit, and is made possible through a gift from Andrew and Barbara Imbrie.

WLADIMIR AND RHODA LAKOND AWARD

The Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond award of $10,000 is given to a promising mid-career composer. This year the award will go to Christopher Theofanidis.

GODDARD LIEBERSON FELLOWSHIPS

Two Goddard Lieberson fellowships of $15,000, endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation, are given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. This year they will go to Edmund Campion and Huck Hodge.

CHARLES IVES FELLOWSHIPS

Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the academy to give the Ives awards in composition since 1970. Two Charles Ives Fellowships, of $15,000 each, will be awarded to Haralabos Stafylakis and Xi Wang.

CHARLES IVES SCHOLARSHIPS

Niccolo Athens, Sean Friar, David Hertzberg, Takuma Itoh, Wang Jie, and Chris Rogerson will receive Charles Ives Scholarships of $7500, given to composition students of great promise.

MARC BLITZSTEIN MEMORIAL AWARD FOR MUSICAL THEATER

Friends of the late academician Marc Blitzstein set up an award, now $5,000, in his memory to be given from time to time to a composer, lyricist, or librettist to encourage the creation of works of merit for musical theater and opera. Chosen by a specially selected committee, the composer John Kander will be awarded this prize.

(—condensed from the press release)

Matheson Wins $200,000 Charles Ives Living Award

James MathesonJames Matheson has won the Charles Ives Living award and will receive $200,000 over a two-year period, beginning July 2012.  Although the Charles Ives Living winner agrees to forgo all salaried employment during the award period, there is no restriction on accepting composition commissions.

The award was announced by J. D. McClatchy, president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Matheson responded, “Two years devoted exclusively to composition is a luxury almost beyond my ability to imagine.  My deepest thanks go to the Academy—and to the ghosts of Charles and Harmony Ives—for making possible this astonishing gift of time.”

The selection committee included John Corigliano (chairman), Martin Bresnick, John Harbison, Stephen Hartke, and Tania León. On their selection, Bresnick noted, “James Matheson is a composer of significant accomplishment and even greater imaginative potential.  He is an ideal Ives Living winner—independent, industrious, and poised for a major contribution to American music.”

Matheson was born in 1970 in Des Moines, Iowa, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He became the director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program in September of 2009.  He has received the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship (2008) and the Hinrichsen Award (2002) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  He was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2000.  From 2005–2007, Matheson was executive director of the MATA Festival of New Music in New York.  His music has been performed by the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago and Albany Symphony Orchestras, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orchestra 2001 (Philadelphia), LA’s Monday Evening Concerts Series, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.  In December 2007, the Los Angeles Philharmonic presented the West Coast Premiere of Matheson’s Songs of Desire, Love and Loss, which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in October 2004 as part of Dawn Upshaw’s Perspectives series.  In February 2008, Antares presented the world premiere of The Anatomy of Melancholy at the Ravinia Festival.  His Violin Concerto, co-commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will receive its world premiere by the CSO later this month.

The Charles Ives Living was inaugurated in 1998 with the selection of Martin Bresnick.  Chen Yi was the second winner in 2001, Stephen Hartke was the third winner, in 2004, and George Tsontakis followed in 2007.

(—from the press release)