Industry News

News and announcements from around the community.

All
MPA
Jun 16

Music Publishers Association Announces 2023 Paul Revere Awards

The 2023 Paul Revere Awards for Graphic Excellence in music publications were announced during the annual meeting of the Music Publishers Association at The Century Club in New York City. In addition, composer Steven Mackey presented BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick with the MPA Composer Advocacy Award and MPA Executive Director Brittain Ashford together with Ian McLoughlin from J.W. Pepper presented the MPA's Arnold Broido Award for Copyright Advocacy to Kathy Fernandes, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at J.W. Pepper.

Tony Awards
Jun 12

Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire Win 2023 Tony Award for Best Musical

Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire's musical Kimberly Akimbo was the big winner at the 2023 Tony Awards announced last night in New York City. In addition to fetching Best Musical, two of the actresses in Kimberly Akimbo--Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan--received awards as did David Lindsay-Abaire for Best Book and shared the award for Best Score with composer Jeanine Tesori, who had previously shared this award with lyricist Lisa Kron for Fun Home in 2015. Parade, which earned composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown the 1999 award for Best Score, received the 2023 Award for Best Revival of a Musical.

OPERA America
Apr 10

OPERA America Awards $100K in Discovery Grants to 8 Women Composers

OPERA America has announced the recipients of the 2023 Discovery Grants from its Opera Grants for Women Composers program (a total of $100,000), made possible with the generosity of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The 2023 recipients are: Juhi Bansal (for Star Singer); Annie Gosfield (for Peggy and Jackson); Jennifer Jolley (for Spacewalk); Dana Kaufman (for Sally Ride); Tamar Muskal (for Nadia); Shara Nova (for The Subnivean Zone: Under the Snow); Bernadette Speach (for The Little Rock Nine); and Jennifer Williams (for Dis/Inform).

Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Apr 06

10 Music Creators Have Received 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships

The Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships in Music Composition to 10 music creators; these 10 award recipients are among 171 individuals in 48 different scholarly disciplines and artistic fields who were chosen as fellows in this cycle through a rigorous application and peer review process out of almost 2,500 applicants. The ten music creators are: Lisa Bielawa (New York, NY), Keith Fitch (Cleveland Heights, OH), Kokayi (Washington, DC), Pascal Le Boeuf (Nashville, TN), Eun Young Lee (Auburndale, MA), Nicole M. Mitchell (Henderson, NC), Dafna Naphtali (Brooklyn, NY), João Pedro Oliveira (Santa Barbara, CA), Timothy Page (Sai Kung, NT, Hong Kong), and Donald Vega (Oyster Bay, NY).

American Academy of Arts and Letters
Feb 24

American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces 2023 Music Award Winners

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced 16 recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $195,000. This years awardees are Andy Akiho, Eve Beglarian, Shih-Hui Chen, Zosha Di Castri, Seare Farhat, Jordyn Gallinek, Luke Haaksma, Robert Honstein, David Ludwig, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Charles Peck, Ali Can Puskulku, Peter Shin, Harriet Steinke, and Bethany Younge. The awards will be presented at the Academy’s Ceremonial on May 24, 2023.

Northwestern
Feb 23

Tania León Awarded the 2023 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition

Tania León, one of the 11 composers in New Music USA's Amplifying Voices program, has been awarded the 2023 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. The $100K prize, which also includes two on-campus residencies and concert performances, was established in 2003 and is one of five Nemmers prizes awarded by Northwestern University. (The others are in the fields of Economics, Mathematics, Medical Science and Earth Sciences.) Nominations are solicited worldwide and the winner is determined by a committee comprising individuals of widely recognized stature in the music community. Previous Nemmers Composition Prize recipients include John Adams, John Luther Adams, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Reich, and Kaija Saariaho.

Doris Duke Foundation
Feb 14

Doris Duke Foundation Announces Artist Awards and Raises Prize to $550K

During the first-ever awards ceremony for the Doris Duke Artist Awards, held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in celebration of the awards' 10th anniversary, the Doris Duke Foundation announced that six new jazz, dance and theatre creators have been named Doris Duke Artists and also revealed that the size of the prize has doubled. Going forward each artist will now receive an award of $550,000, up from the previous sum of $275,000. The two musicians who have been named Doris Duke Artists are composer/trumpeter/producer Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly known as Christian Scott) and composer/vocalist/cellist Laura Kabasomi Kakoma, known by her stage name Somi. Additionally, the 129 previously named Doris Duke Artists each received a surprise bonus of $20,000, an unprecedented gift "in recognition of their transformative creative potential and seismic ongoing contributions to the fields of contemporary dance, jazz and theater at large."

ASCAP
Feb 13

Iván Enrique Rodríguez Receives the 2003 ASCAP Foundation Nissim Prize

Puerto Rican composer Iván Enrique Rodríguez (b. 1990) has been named recipient of the 43rd annual ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize for Sinfonia No. 2: Naa Okùnkùn ti Òkúta Dídán, an approximately 15-minute work for orchestra. In addition to awarding the $5000 prize to Rodríguez, the jury of three conductors (James Blachly, Tong Chen, and Julius P. Williams) has also awarded Special Distinction to: Nickitas Demos of Atlanta, GA for Three Soundscapes for Symphonic Winds; Dan Lazarescou of Dallas, TX for Impressions from the Black Sea for full orchestra; and Patrick O’Malley of Los Angeles, CA and Lake Charlevoix, MI for Obliviana for full orchestra.

BMI Foundation
Nov 28

BMI Revises Guidelines for its Annual Composer Awards

To reflect BMI's focus on the composer, no matter where they are from, the program's new name is The BMI Composer Awards. To allow broad access, distribute resources more equitably, and create more inclusive programs, applicants are no longer required to be studying music formally. Works must still be largely notated (except for electronic elements) and through-composed; and compositions will still be judged based on the score; recordings of works are only acceptable for submissions that have non-notatable elements such as electronics.

Vilcek Foundation
Oct 20

Five Music Creators Honored with 2023 Vilcek Foundation Awards

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun and Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo have been awarded the 2023 Prize in Music; additionally composer/singer/producer (and New Music USA Program Council member) Arooj Aftab, composer/conductor (and Amplifying Voices participant) Juan Pablo Contreras, and songwriter/producer Ruby Ibarra have been awarded 2023 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Music. The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.

Musical America
Oct 13

Jessie Montgomery Named 2023 Musical America Composer of the Year

Musical America, the oldest American classical music magazine which now publishes music news online as well as an annual print directory, has named Jessie Montgomery its 2023 Composer of the Year. Montgomery, who was the subject of a Spotlight Session on NewMusicBox in 2016, is currently one of the composers involved in New Music USA's Amplifying Voices program.

MacArthur Foundation
Oct 12

Ikue Mori and Tomeka Reid Named MacArthur Fellows

Composers Ikue Mori and Tomeka Reid are among the 25 recipients of 2022 MacArthur Fellowships, an $800K stipend that in popular parlance in often called the "Genius" award.

Kennedy Center
Jul 21

Tania León Among 2022 Kennedy Center Honorees

The Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award given to performing arts practitioners for their lifetime achievement and impact on American culture, will this year be given to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León, seven-time Grammy-winning soul/R&B vocalist Gladys Knight, contemporary Christian and pop singer-songwriter Amy Grant, the members of Irish rock band U2 (the first time anyone based outside of the USA has been so honored), and actor/filmmaker George Clooney. They will all be honored on December 4, 2022 at the 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors gala.

MPA
Jun 20

Music Publishers Association Announces 2022 Paul Revere Awards

The Music Publishers Association's Paul Revere Awards for Excellence in Music Engraving were announced during the MPA's annual meeting on Friday, June 17, 2022. Among the winners were: Chou Wen-Chung's Eternal Pine for Korean instrument ensemble and the vocal score for Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's new opera The Listeners (both engraved by David Fetherolf); an anthology of experimental piano music published by the American Composers Alliance; and three scores by composer Katherine Balch, all of which she engraved herself. The extraordinary handwritten manuscript scores of the late George Crumb published by C.F. Peters were acknowledged with a special award.

Alpert Awards
May 04

Tomeka Reid and Cory Smythe Win 2022 Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts

Composer/Improvisers Tomeka Reid and Cory Smythe are among the 10 recipients of the 2022 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a prize which honors risk-taking, mid-career artists in music, dance, theatre, film/video, and the visual arts who are challenging and transforming art, their respective disciplines, and society. Each awardee receives a $75,000 unrestricted prize and residency at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) which administers the prize on behalf of the Herb Alpert Foundation. The music panelists for the 2022 Awards were George Lewis, Gustavo Matamoros, and Myra Melford.

CMA
Apr 12

Chamber Music America Awards Over $700,000 in Grants to Ensembles and Presenters through Three Programs

Chamber Music America (CMA), the national network for ensemble music professionals, today announced the distribution of $734,266 through three of its grant programs: Artistic Projects, CMA’s newest program, supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation; and Performance Plus and Presenter Consortium for Jazz, both supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Composers awarded include Lena Bloch, Yumi Kurosawa, Emilio Solla, and Henry Threadgill.

Guggenheim Foundation
Apr 07

13 Composers Among the 2022 Guggenheim Fellows

This year's Guggenheim Fellowships have been awarded to a total of 180 scientists, writers, scholars, and artists honored across 51 fields who were chosen from a rigorous application and peer review process out of almost 2500 applicants. Among them are 13 composers: Patricia Alessandrini, Phyllis Chen, David Dominique, Peter David Evans, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Sungji Hong, Panayiotis Kokoras, Charles Peck, Leah Reid, Rafael Rosa, Örjan Sandred, Nathan Shields, and Marlon Simon.

American Academy of Arts and Letters
Mar 03

Five Composers Newly Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters

John Luther Adams, Jennifer Higdon, Annea Lockwood, David Sanford, and Christopher Theofanidis are among the eighteen new members who will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters during its annual Ceremonial on May 18, 2022.

Peters
Feb 17

Tyshawn Sorey signs with Edition Peters

Edition Peters has announced that composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey, one of the nine participating composers in New Music USA's Amplifying Voices program, has signed an exclusive world-wide publishing agreement with the New York firm, beginning with the publication of five works in February of 2022. The five Tyshawn Sorey works now available from Peters are: For Marcos Balter for violin and orchestra; For Roscoe Mitchell for cello and orchestra; For Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. In Memoriam for large mixed ensemble; For Bill Dixon and A. Spencer Barefield for large ensemble; and Save the Boys for countertenor and piano.

Arts & Letters
Feb 15

American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces 2022 Music Award Winners

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced 18 recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $205,000. The award-winning composers, who will be honored at the Academy’s Ceremonial on May 18, 2022, are: Leila Adu Gilmore, Katherine Balch, Marcos Balter, Justin Dello Joio, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Erin Gee, Michael Gilbertson, Brittany Green, Mike Holober, Sungji Hong, Marco Jimenez, James Mobberley, Eric Nathan, Paul Novak, Nicole Russell, Michael Seltenreich, Aaron Travers, and Kari Watson.

ASCAP
Feb 15

Patrick Holcomb Awarded the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize

Patrick Holcomb (b. 1996) has been named the recipient of the 42nd ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize of $5000 for Persephone, a seven and a half-minute work for orchestra composed in 2019. The jury of three conductors--Peter Askim, Theresa Cheung, and Julius P. Williams--also awarded Special Distinction to Bobby Ge for Metastable State, JP Merz for gun, fire, and Karalyn Schubring for Piano Concerto No. 1.

Gaudeamus
Sep 13

Annika Socolofsky wins the 2021 Gaudeamus Award

Composer-performer Annika Socolofsky has won the 2021 Gaudeamus Award for her composition Don’t say a word on September 12 during the final concert by Black Page Orchestra of Gaudeamus 2021 in TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Socolofsky was one of four composers nominated for this prestigious incentive prize--along with Jenny Beck, Gen Tanaka and Matthew Ricketts--in 2020, but because of pandemic-related travel restrictions there was no ceremony last year.

Barlow
Aug 17

Texu Kim Awarded the 2021 Barlow Prize

The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University has awarded its 2021 $12,000 Barlow Prize commission to Korean-born American composer Texu Kim after reviewing 574 submissions from 41 countries. Kim will write a major new work for Sinfonietta to be premiered by Alarm Will Sound, The London Sinfonietta, The Oakland Symphony Orchestra, and The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2023-2024. In addition, the Endowment granted $60,000 to 9 composers who will write works for the following ensembles and musicians: David Biedenbender (Haven Trio), Dorothy Chang (Evelyn Glennie and Land’s End Ensemble), Natacha Diels (JACK Quartet), Stefan Freund (Splinter Reeds), Todd Kitchen (Left Coast Chamber Ensemble), Wang Lu (Seattle Modern Orchestra), Lansing McLoskey (Network for New Music), Joseph Sowa (Room 1078), and Ethan Wickman (San Antonio Symphony).

ISCM
Aug 13

Tania León's Stride Among 64 Works Chosen for Performance During the 2021 ISCM WNMD

The organizers of the 2021 ISCM World New Music Days in Shanghai and Nanning, China, have announced their selection of works which will be performed during the festival; among the 64 chosen works is Tania León's 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning orchestra work Stride, which was submitted by New Music USA. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing dangers posed by the pandemic around the world, the festival will not be able to take place in September 2021 as was originally planned, but the organizers are hoping that the festival can occur in late March 2022.