News In Brief 4/14/05

Spring has sprung, and the good news in the composing field is pouring in.

Steve Reich may not have gotten the nod from the Pulitzer committee this year, but he’ll be popping over to New Hampshire this August so The MacDowell Colony can present him with its Edward MacDowell Medal during their annual Medal Day celebration. He will be the 46th recipient of the honor, awarded “to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the arts.”

“He never plays it safe,” says composer Francis Thorne, who served as the Medal Selection Committee chairman. “His music carries a personality that takes its hat off to nobody.” Composer David Lang, another member of the committee, agrees: “Steve Reich is one of the towering giants of American music. His sound, which combines rigorous structures with propulsive rhythms and seductive instrumental color, is instantly recognizable, and has been influential to composers in America and all over the world.” Other members of this year’s committee included Chen Yi, distinguished professor in music composition at the University of Missouri’s Conservatory of Music; and composer Robert Beaser.

Reich joins an impressive list of past recipients, including Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, and Lou Harrison.

***Subito Music Publishing has announced the appointment of Tom Broido as Vice-President of Business Development. He will take the reins of the customer sales and marketing division of Subito Distribution.

Long a figure in the publishing industry, Broido became Executive Vice President of Theodore Presser Company in 1993 and served as its President from 1995 to 2005. In addition, he was active in the Music Publishers’ Association of the United States, serving as President as well as Chairperson of its Research and Development Committee.

***Princeton composer David T. Little (b. 1978) has won the 2004-2005 Harvey Gaul Composition Competition held by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Little will receive a $6,000 cash award and a commission for a new work to be premiered by the PNME during its 2006 season.

A two-time BMI Student Composer Award Winner, in recent years Little has also picked up the 2004 Jacob Druckman Award for Orchestral Composition from the Aspen Music Festival, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and served as the 2001 ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. An active performer, improviser and collaborator, Little is currently pursuing a PhD at Princeton University. His primary teachers have included William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Three composers also received Honorable Mentions: Shih-Hui Chen, James D. Norman and Hyekyung Lee. This year the competition attracted a record number of submissions (over 200), perhaps a result of changes to the competition that included doubling the amount of the first prize cash award.