Melinda Wagner photo courtesy Theodore Presser Company

April 12 - Philadelphia-born New Jersey resident Melinda Wagner's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion has been awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The $5000 award is given for a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the past year. Written for flutist/conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel, Ms. Wagner's Concerto was premiered by him on May 30, 1998 in a performance with the Westchester Philharmonic conducted by Mark Mandarano in Purchase NY in celebration of the orchestra's 15th anniversary. Dunkel and Mandarano subsequently performed the Concerto in New York City with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on September 27, 1998. The work has also been scheduled by the Illinois Chamber Symphony and the Oakland-East Bay (CA) Symphony. A member of the American Music Center, Melinda Wagner (b. 1957) was the recipient of a $2000 CAP grant for the Concerto which enabled her to have score parts copied.

Excerpt from Melinda Wagner: Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion   [94 seconds] RealAudio sound clip

Also nominated as finalists for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Music were: Persistent Memory by David Rakowski, premiered on March 7, 1998 by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall; and Concerto for Orchestra by Stanislav Skrowaczewski, premiered on November 19, 1998 by the Curtis Symphony at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. In addition, a Special Award was bestowed posthumously on Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, "commemorating the centennial year of his birth, in recognition of his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture." The Jurors for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Music were Gunther Schuller, Leslie Bassett, John Lewis, Wayne Petersen and Tim Page.

A recording of the 1998 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, AMC-member Aaron Jay Kernis's String Quartet No. 2 ('musica instrumentalis'), featuring the Lark Quartet, who commissioned and premiered the work, will be released in May 1999 on Arabesque Recordings.

Excerpt from Aaron Jay Kernis: String Quartet No. 2 (Third Movement), performed by the Lark Quartet   [63 seconds] RealAudio sound clip

Webliography:

People
Leslie Bassett
sai-national.org/pubs/win98/lbassett.html

Paul Lustig Dunkel
www.visitus.com/buickclassic/phil/phildunk.htm

Duke Ellington
www.dnsmith.com/ellington/

Aaron Jay Kernis
www.schirmer.com/composers/kernis/bio.html

John Lewis
www.ozemail.com.au/~jazclass/lewis.htm

Tim Page
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/music/classical.htm#new

Wayne Petersen
www.stokar.com/peterson.htm

David Rakowski
www.soundout.com/composers/rakowski.html

Gunther Schuller
www.proarte.org/people/gunther.htm

Stanislav Skrowaczewski
www.greatconductors.com/english/skrowaczewski/#bio

Melinda Wagner
www.presser.com/wagner.html

A conversation with Melinda Wagner
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, April 19, 1999

American Music Center
www.amc.net

Arabesque Recordings
www.arabesquerecords.com

CAP Grants
www.amc.net/resources/grants/copy.html

Concerto for Flute
americancomposers.org/rel980927.htm#WAGNER

Curtis Symphony
www.curtis.edu/season/symphony.htm

15th Anniversary of the Westchester Philharmonic
www.nytimes.com/library/arts/051799melinda-wagner.html

Lark Quartet
www.larkquartet.com/

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
208.240.253.235/dev/orpheus/index.html

Pulitzer Prize
www.pulitzer.org
www.library.american.edu/exhibits/list.html

Westchester Philharmonic
www.visitus.com/buickclassic/phil/PHIL_01.HTM