NY clarinet is awarded 100 grand
mainAnthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, has been awarded the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize.
It’s worth $100,000 and a line on a commemorative plaque at Lincoln Center.
The unanimous decision to award Anthony McGill the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize was made in December 2019 by the Program’s Executive Committee (Chair Deborah Borda recused herself). The official announcement was to have been made in April with a celebration to follow in June. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, both the announcement and celebration had to be postponed.
Well deserved. Anthony is a great artist.
I love this guy and have knows him since high School…well deserved honor.
HOWEVER: there are a lot of Professional players out there in NYC wondering when they might get payed to play classical music again?
Maybe it’s time for honorary awards and then having the foundation donate the money to the AFM….for relief aid for out of work freelance players,
Why, and for what, did he win the prize? It may be totally deserved, but since there is no announcement, and we are in the year of Black is Great*, one can’t be blamed to suspect maybe this is a moment of black privilege, when the scared shitless rich white folk in Upper East Side would hand out a little something to a token in their midst to show the world “see, we are not racists. We are down with the program”. It’s very cheap protection money, for now.
* In which, all blacks are great and beautiful; no blacks can do anything bad or wrong; and all their problems are the results of whiteys. To reject that means you are a racist, case closed.
Yes, obvious diversity awarding. Nothing more. There would be no particular reason to award it to some clarinetist who’s out of work anyway. They see it as a good investment (in advertising).
So, there couldn’t poooooooooosibly be any other reason than his race? Your comment makes me ashamed to be a fellow human being.
Please avoid feeding the trolls on this site, if possible. They do well enough feeding each other.
You are absolutely correct and I appreciate the reminder. It is so difficult to let certain statements go unchecked.
they can only give prizes of 100k+ in the USA. is this where classical music will continue to thrive?
kudos
The Avery F. panel should surely have used a little initiative this year and divided the money into several worthy causes
Last quarter of 2019 we were far to know what would come in 2020.
This prize was awarded in December 2019. Did you actually read?
Congrats Anthony McGill. Well deserved . I started on clarinet and switched to the bassoon
Those of you who are claiming that Anthony only received this award due to the color of his skin need to remember that he occupies one of the most prestigious orchestral clarinet positions in the world, which he earned through a blind audition.