Arts Briefing; Classical Music and Dance
By TOM STRINI
Reich receives lifetime achievement award
The American Music Center has named composer Steve Reich the recipient of its 2008 Founders Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Reich, 70, was a key figure in the musical movement that came to be called Minimalism. He has been enormously influential on generations of composers and his own work has evolved over a lifetime.
AMC will give Reich his award at a ceremony May 5 in New York. The American Music Center promotes and nurtures new American music through grants, the NewMusicBox Web magazine and Counterstream Radio. It also has a database of almost 49,000 pieces.
Florentine garners $10,000 grant
Opera America has awarded Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera a $10,000 grant for initial development of “Rio de Sangre,” by composer Don Davis and librettist Kate Gale.
The Florentine was one of 12 companies in the United States and Canada to receive $10,000 to $50,000 to fund new operas from the service organization, which promotes the art of opera in North America.
Piano contest seeks participants, voters
The Van Cliburn Foundation will host a YouTube video piano competition for amateurs, to be judged by online viewers.
The contest is open to any classical pianist who does not derive a significant portion of his or her income from performance, composition and/or piano instruction and is at least 35 years old.
The winner of the Cliburn YouTube Contest will be entered in the next International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, to be held in the summer of 2011 in Fort Worth; the application fee will be waived.
Videos, five to 10 minutes long, must be posted at www.youtube.com/profile_groups?user=VanCliburnFoundation by April 30.
Beginning May 1, voters may go online and choose a contestant. Voters will be required to register through the Cliburn’s Web site and will be sent a ballot via e-mail. Voting closes May 15.
For more information, including rules and regulations and video clips from the Amateur Competition, visit www.cliburn.org.
From North Korea to your living room
Milwaukee Public Television will air the New York Philharmonic’s recent performance in North Korea at 1 p.m. Sunday on WMVS-TV (Channel 10).
The historic cultural exchange took place Feb. 26. This broadcast will be part of the PBS “Great Performances” series.
— Tom Strini, tstrini@journalsentinel.com
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