Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Pulitzer Prize

George Walker Pulitzer Winner and Trailblazer

George Walker was the first African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music – as recently as 1996 – for his work, “Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra.” He was the first black pianist to present a solo recital at New York’s Town Hall (in 1945). He was the first black performer to appear as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra (performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3). He was the first black musician to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music (where he studied with Rudolf Serkin and Rosario Scalero).

Walker died on August 23, 2018, at the age of 96. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor 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,” and “Lyric for Strings,” his most famous music, in its original version for string quartet.

Born in Washington, D.C., Walker was a longtime resident of Montclair, NJ. His father emigrated from Kingston, Jamaica, to study at Temple University School of Medicine; Walker’s mother supervised his first piano lessons. He was admitted to the Oberlin School of Music at the age of 14. He was then admitted to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and later attended the Eastman School. For two years, he studied in Paris with the famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.

Walker’s own academic career included posts with Dillard University in New Orleans, the Dalcroze School of Music, the New School for Social Research, Smith College, the University of Colorado Boulder, Rutgers University (where he served as chairman of the music department), the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, and the University of Delaware.

He was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker. His sister, the pianist, Frances Walker-Slocum, died on June 9 at the age of 94.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which has played a number of the composer’s pieces over the years, has announced that it will be adding “Lyric for Strings” to its opening concerts, October 5th through October 7th, to be performed in Newark and New Brunswick. Also on the program will be the U.S. premiere of Kate Whitley’s “Speak Out” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Find out more at njsymphony.org.

Then join me for “Perambulations with Walker,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 2, 2018
Karel Husa Pulitzer Winner & “Prague 1968” Composer Dies

The Czech-born composer Karel Husa has died. A former student of Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger, Husa came to the United States in 1954. He became an American citizen in 1959.

In 1969, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his String Quartet No. 3. In 1993, he was honored with a Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his Cello Concerto. However, he is probably best known for his “Music for Prague 1968,” inspired by the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Performance of his music was banned in his homeland for over three decades. At the time of his death, Husa was 95 years-old.

“Music for Prague 1968”:

The composer is interviewed by Bruce Duffie:

http://www.bruceduffie.com/husa.html

December 15, 2016
Henry Threadgill Wins Pulitzer Prize

The recipients of the centennial Pulitzer Prizes were announced this afternoon at 3:00 EDT. The final category to be addressed was that of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. And the winner is…

Henry Threadgill, for “In for a Penny, In for a Pound.”

Threadgill, 72, studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He is a composer, saxophonist and flautist, whose compositions have pushed boundaries for the past 50 years. His orchestral, chamber, and solo instrumental works have been performed at BAM, Bang on a Can, and Carnegie Hall. Peter Watrous of The New York Times described Threadgill as “perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation,” though Threadgill has distanced himself from any such easy categorization.

You can read a review of the recording here. Threadgill plays sax in the embedded video

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound-henry-threadgill-pi-recordings-review-by-mark-f-turner.php

Here’s another sample of his work (NOT “In for a Penny,” which has not, to my knowledge, been posted), this time with the composer on flute and sax, from the Library of Congress in Washington, DC:

And a conversation with Threadgill, also from the Library of Congress:

In other music news, Lin-Manuel Miranda was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his Broadway juggernaut “Hamilton.”

April 18, 2016
Pulitzer Prize Winning Music on the Radio

April is Pulitzer Prize time. This year marks the centennial of the award, which honors excellence in journalism and the arts. Media interest is cresting in advance of the naming of the 2016 honorees, which will take place tomorrow.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll take a look at the Pulitzer Prize for Music. The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917, in the fields of journalism, education, letters and drama. The music prize didn’t come along until 1943.

Of the dozens of pieces honored over the years, surprisingly few have remained in the public consciousness. Only Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and perhaps Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting” have established themselves firmly in the repertoire – though the operas of Gian Carlo Menotti and Robert Ward are occasionally revived.

I thought we’d spend yet another hour in what has become an annual salute with some perhaps lesser-known works, though their lack of familiarity is certainly no reflection on the quality of the music or the talent of the composers themselves.

We’ll hear a piece by Norman Dello Joio, who was awarded a Pulitzer for his “Meditations on Ecclesiastes” in 1957. You know the famous Bible verse, from Book Three of Ecclesiastes, which begins “To everything there is a season.” Its twelve sections consist of an introduction, a statement of a theme, and then ten variations on that theme, calibrated to reflect the verses’ inner meanings. We’ll hear the strings of the Oregon Symphony conducted by James DePriest.

Then we’ll turn to a deserving work from more recent times. Caroline Shaw, currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, was 30 years old when she received her award in 2013, making her the youngest Pulitzer winner in her category.

She was recognized for a virtuosic piece of “a cappella” writing, her “Partita for 8 Voices,” composed between 2009 and 2012. Shaw wrote it for performance by her ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a founding member. Roomful of Teeth is well-versed in world styles, and the “Partita” reflects the group’s mastery of a broad array of genres and idioms.

The Pulitzer committee cited Shaw’s creation as a “highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.” Its four movements are titled after baroque dance forms – Allemande, Sarabande, Courante and Passacaglia. The texts are drawn from instructions for a wall drawing by Sol Lewitt, “Wall Drawing 305,” currently on display at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The performance on this recording, issued on New Amsterdam Records, is incredible.

I hope you’ll join me for “Pulitzer Prized” – music by recipients of one of music’s most prestigious awards – this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

April 17, 2016
George Walker Pulitzer Winner & More

I wonder if George Walker – born on this date in 1922 – ever gets tired of reading that he was the first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music? It is generally the first thing we read about him. What makes it especially remarkable is that it occurred as recently as 1996. But Walker is so much more than a statistic.

The composer, who makes his home in Montclair, NJ, was recognized by the Pulitzer committee for “Lilacs,” four songs for soprano and orchestra, after the poetry of Walt Whitman. The work was given its premiere by Faye Robinson and the Boston Symphony, under the direction of Seiji Ozawa.

60 years earlier, he gave his first public performance as a pianist, at the age of 14. He studied piano at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He also studied composition there with Rosario Scalero. Later, he went to Paris for additional studies with Robert Casadesus and Nadia Boulanger. He was good enough a pianist that he performed the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Walker has produced an impressive body of work, over a career which has spanned nearly 80 years. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of his Sinfonia No. 4, “Strands,” as part of its 2011-12 season. In 2009-10, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the world premiere of his Violin Concerto, with the composer’s son, Gregory, as the soloist. On a separate series of concerts, the orchestra also performed “Lilacs.”

However, it is for a work Walker composed while still a student at Curtis that he is probably best-known. The “Lyric for Strings,” dedicated to the memory of the composer’s grandmother, is touching in its simplicity. It deserves to be as widely played as Barber’s “Adagio,” although Walker’s is quite a different piece. The tender recollection manages to be moving without all the hand wringing and angst.

In an interview given in 2012, Walker commented, “I’ve always thought in universal terms, not just what is black or what is American, but simply what has quality.”

Happy birthday, George Walker!

“Lyric,” in its original version for string quartet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17alPNaVfY

“Lilacs,” with Faye Robinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ScgQUzMqhg&list=PLdBmNPZATi4xJ-5iSf7vNLfmErvsoOsP1

Brief 2012 documentary on Walker, in which he is interviewed, for the occasion of his 90th birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYnEXI3WyRQ

An interview he gave with the Detroit Free Press earlier this year: http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/03/03/george-walker-classical-roots-dso/24332241/

June 27, 2015

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