Following the Sunday matinee of Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”) at the Metropolitan Opera, the composer and some of the principals joined general manager Peter Gelb onstage for a post-performance conversation.
Seeing Frank in the flesh set me thinking: how many Pulitzer Prize winners (for music) have I encountered in person? Alphabetically, I think this is a comprehensive list: William Bolcom, George Crumb, David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Wynton Marsalis, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Moravec, Bernard Rands, Shulamit Ran, Ned Rorem, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, Melinda Wagner, George Walker, Richard Wernick, Julia Wolfe.
Some of these composers I saw more than once, a few were chance encounters, some I basically said hello to or had a quick exchange with, some of them I interviewed, a few I had actual, candid conversations with.
Those of you who are a little older or who had more mobility than I did as a teenager may have interacted with more of the legends I would have loved to have seen. Sadly, for all my precocity, I was somewhat of a provincial child and not very proactive about figuring out how to buy concert tickets and climb on a bus to New York or Philadelphia.
I would be delighted to read about any of your Pulitzer-winner encounters, if you care to share them in the comments below!
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PHOTO (left-to-right): librettist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz, Pulitzer Prize winning 0composer Gabriela Lena Frank, countertenor Nils Wanderer (Leonardo), baritone Carlos Álvarez (Diego Rivera), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Frida Kahlo), general director Peter Gelb.
Gabriella Reyes (Catrina, Keeper of the Dead) was already backstage – Gelb explained that it takes an hour for her to remove her costume and make-up – and Yannick Nézet-Séguin was off to Germany to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.
Tag: Pulitzer Prize
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A Frank Recollection of Pulitzer Prize Winners
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Frankly Surprised: An Actual, Straight-Down-the-Middle Composer Wins the Pulitzer
Gabriela Lena Frank is the recipient of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. The prize was announced yesterday, but certain slow-to-react social media outlets are still catching up with the news.
Frank was recognized for “Picaflor: A Future Myth.” The work is tied to the composer’s personal experiences with the California wildfires and her knowledge Andean legend.
The composition was introduced in Marian Anderson Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on March 13, 2025, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. It was a co-commission of the orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, and Bravo! Vail Music Center.
Cast in “ten powerful movements,” as characterized by the Pulitzer committee, “Picaflor” follows an original program, inspired by Andean-Peruvian mythology transplanted to a futuristic setting. “It draws upon the legends of a sky kingdom ruled by a sun god creator, a rebellious hummingbird… who tears through the sky, and the chaski – messengers of the Inca Empire. The piece is also immersed in the concept of pachacuti, the belief that era-worlds undergo cataclysmic transformations every few hundred years. These elements reflect the composer’s own climate activism in both art and life, and her pride as a generational daughter of Indigenous Perú.”
The work is dedicated to the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and is the culmination of a residency with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Frank, whose works have been frequently programmed, was born in Berkeley, CA, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent. Following in the footsteps of musical heroes Béla Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, she serves as a kind of musical anthropologist. According to her bio, she’s “traveled extensively through South America, and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a Western classical framework that is uniquely her own.”
I haven’t heard this particular piece yet, but her music is colorful and full of incident.
It’s nice to have a Pulitzer winner that can be performed by an actual symphony orchestra again.
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Frank previews “Picaflor” in 90 seconds:
“Escaramuza” (2010)
“Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout” (2001)
“Elegía Andina” (2000)
“Three Latin American Dances” (2004)
Through a strange quirk of fate, because of my illness this weekend, I was unable to attend “Eugene Onegin” at the Met. So I traded my ticket for a seat at the Met debut of Frank’s recent opera, “El último sueño de Frida y Diego,” a magical-realist, upside-down Orpheus and Euridice story about painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diegoThere’s my Cinco de Mayo connection!
You don’t have to go to New York to see it. It will be simulcast in select cinemas as part of the “Met Live in HD” series on May 30. Find a theater near you at the link (below the photo, there’s a red tab on the right).
https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diego/A 16-second teaser
Congratulations, Gabriela Lena Frank! -
Perambulations with Walker on “The Lost Chord”
It’s crazy that the first time an African American composer would receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music was only in 1996. I remember when it happened. It was a pretty big deal. A special award had been made to Scott Joplin in 1976 – 59 years after Joplin’s death – and there have been some special citations and a number of Black honorees since. In more recent years, it’s not been unusual for composers of all races to be recognized. But it was George Walker who broke the glass ceiling.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate this trailblazing artist with a program of four of his original works, including his Piano Sonata No. 2 (with the composer himself at the keyboard), the award-winning “Lilacs” (after poetry of Walt Whitman), “Address for Orchestra” (his first major orchestral work), and “Lyric for Strings” (his most famous music, in its original version for string quartet).
By his own assessment, Walker was a composer more interested in building “elegant structures” than in “creating beauty.” Depending on one’s sensibility, it could be argued that he achieved both.
In an interview given in 2012, he commented, “I’ve always thought in universal terms, not just what is Black or what is American, but simply what has quality.”
I hope you’ll join me for “Perambulations with Walker” on “The Lost Chord,” now syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
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A fascinating interview with Walker by Frank J. Oteri, which, among other things, lends an added dimension to Walker’s most frequently performed music (the “Lyric”) and offers insights into his life and musical philosophy. Also, some great photos!
https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/george-walker-concise-and-precise/ -
Richard Wernick Pulitzer Winner Almost Hit Me
To my knowledge, Richard Wernick is the only Pulitzer Prize-winning composer ever to nearly run me down with a car.
Wernick was a highly visible presence in Philadelphia when I attended musical events there in the 1980s and ‘90s, and for all I know, beyond. When I started working weekend mornings at a certain radio station in 1995, I had to get up at 3 or 4:00 in the morning. Ironically, it cut into my ability to attend concerts.
For all the times I espied Wernick around Philadelphia, I only spoke to him once. He was in the company of fellow Pulitzer Prize-winner George Crumb at a student recital at the Curtis Institute of Music. Now, I adored Crumb, and having him there in the back of the room, especially with Wernick by his side, was rather intimidating. I so wanted to speak to him, but I was conflicted. I certainly didn‘t want to bug him at a concert, especially if he was with somebody, and doubly-especially if that somebody happened to be Richard Wernick. Little did I realize, until many years later, when we had multiple opportunities to meet during rehearsals and concerts of Orchestra 2001, just how much of a pussycat Crumb could be. On this particular day, he struck me as unapproachable and as terrifying as one of his Black Angels.
Be that as it may, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. It just so happened that I lived only about a block away, so I was able to dash back to my apartment and retrieve a CD on Bridge Records, Inc. that contained works by both composers.
When I got back, I caught them just as they were leaving the building, and Crumb, likely nonplussed by this 20 year-old autograph hound, was kind enough to sign. Then I looked to Wernick sheepishly, and with Crumb’s signature already on the booklet, he couldn’t very well say no. I know I mumbled a few words of appreciation, but probably didn’t say much of worth. At best, I may have provided a source of amusement on their walk back to the car, as when they left I could see they were chuckling with one another.
When I decided I would be writing about this, I wanted to get the time-line straight. Did the autograph encounter happen first, or was it after Wernick went “Death Race 2000” on me? It took me a while, but I decided the autograph had to have come first, because when I stepped off the curb into Market Street, as Wernick hurtled toward 15th Street at City Hall, I was essentially pulled back by a friend, a classmate and coworker I hadn’t become close to until a few years after the Curtis encounter. In fact, at the time, he confirmed what had already flashed before my eyes. “I’m pretty sure that was Richard Wernick!” he said.
Wernick was always easily identifiable from his facial hair – a mustache and goatee – and an unmistakable, black-brimmed hat he wore. I don’t remember what he was driving, but I seem to remember it was a rather incongruously compact car to be holding such a flamboyantly-hatted figure.
So it was somehow appropriate, in my case, that Wernick won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his “Visions of Terror and Wonder” in 1977. (Crumb was recognized for “Echoes of Time and the River” in 1968.)
Wernick served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania (with Crumb and George Rochberg) from 1968 to 1996. During Riccardo Muti’s tenure as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he also served as a programming consultant, suggesting new works to the maestro, with a particular emphasis on American composers – hence his frequent presence at the Academy of Music.
Wernick studied at Brandeis University with composers of the Boston School, including Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, and Leonard Bernstein. He received further lessons in composition at Tanglewood from Ernst Toch, Aaron Copland, and Boris Blacher. His own music sounds like none of these. In fact, his music steadfastly refuses to meet an audience halfway. Make of that what you will. You’ll find plenty of it posted on YouTube.
I didn’t know him as a man. For all I know, he could have exuded warmth and humor. I don’t hear any of that in his compositions. Still, I recognize his significance, and I am sorry to see him go, since, as I say, he was such a presence during a certain period of my life.
Wernick died on Friday at the age of 91. Which means he was probably about my age as he barreled down on me! How did I get stuck in this time-loop?
R.I.P.
Wernick interview with Bruce Duffie:
https://www.kcstudio.com/wernick.html
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Wernick, Rochberg and Crumb; amiable-looking Wernick; Wernick in the Chapeau of Doom; Wernick’s autograph
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Copland Sorey Pulitzer Music Victory
It was on V-E Day, marking Allied victory in Europe on this date in 1945, that Aaron Copland became the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his ballet “Appalachian Spring.” It remains one of the most successful of Pulitzer Prize winners, very few of which have remained in the active repertoire.
This is a good opportunity for me to acknowledge the fact, only slightly belatedly, that this year’s honoree is Tyshawn Sorey, who was awarded the prize on Monday for “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith),” a 20-minute work for alto saxophone and orchestra. Sorey describes the piece, which was co-commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Lucerne Festival, as an “anti-concerto,” designed to “provide a respite from the chaos and intrusiveness on modern life.”
I was able to locate an audio file here:
https://soundcloud.com/tyshawn-sorey/adagio-for-wadada-leo-smith
In 2020, Sorey joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Belated congratulations to him for this year’s Pulitzer recognition.
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