Some of the AAAL 2000 Music Awards Winners

American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces 2000 Music Awards Winners

The American Academy of Arts and Letters recently announced the sixteen recipients of this year's awards in music, which total $170,000. The winners were selected by a committee of Academy members: Robert Ward (Chairman), Jack Beeson, Andrew Imbrie, Ezra Laderman, Ned Rorem, George Perle, Joan Tower, and George Walker. The awards will be presented at the Academy's annual ceremony in May. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the Academy's membership of 250. Nominees were asked to submit two original scores to be judged.

Four composers will each receive a $7500 Academy Award in Music, which honors lifetime achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. This year's winners are Sebastian Currier, Libby Larsen, David Rakowski, and Melinda Wagner. Each of them will also receive $7500 toward the recording of one work.

The $5000 Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award, inaugurated in 1993, will go this year to the composer Robert Livingston Aldridge.

The Goddard Lieberson Fellowships, endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation, are given to young composers of exceptional gifts. This year the two $15,000 fellowships are awarded to Kenneth Frazelle and Richard Wargo.

Susan Forrest Harding was chosen to receive the Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of an engraved edition of a work by a gifted American composer. This award was established by the C.F. Peters Corporation, music publishers, in 1984.

Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Charles Ives' music, which has enabled the Academy to give the Ives awards in music since 1970. The two Charles Ives Fellowships of $15,000 each, given to composers in mid-career, will be awarded to Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Gregory T. S. Walker.

Christina Haisung Ahn, Sara Doncaster, John Kaefer, Marcus Karl Maroney, Eli Marshall, and Laurie San Martin, will each receive a Charles Ives Scholarship of $7,500, given to composition students of great promise.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 to "foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts." Each year, the Academy honors over 50 composers, artists, architects, and writers with cash awards ranging from $2,500 to $75,000. Other activities of the Academy are exhibitions of art, architecture, and manuscripts; publications on the Academy's history and events; and readings and performances of new musicals. Its membership is limited to 250, and election is considered the country's highest honor in the arts. The Academy is located in two landmark buildings designed by McKim, Mead & White and by Cass Gilbert, on Audubon Terrace at 155th Street and Broadway.