New York Serb wins richest composer prize
NewsThe 2024 Grawemeyer award in music composition, worth $100,000, has gone to Aleksandra Vrebalov for ‘Missa Supratext,’ a 22-minute work for string quartet and girls’ chorus premiered by Kronos.
Verbalov, 53, has lived in the US since 1995 and and has written 15 works for Kronos since 1997. She has more than 100 published scores.
She said: ‘Missa Supratext is unrelated to any religion … The words are made up and have no meaning. The piece goes beyond verbal narrative to show how all life on our planet is interconnected.’
Recent winners of the Grawemeyer include Olga Neuwirth and Julian Anderson. The first winners, in 1985-86, were Lutoslawski and Ligeti.
Verbalov’s reaction: ‘I am so very grateful to receive this amazing international heritage award! I cheer to my collaborators Kronos Quartet for commissioning and performing Missa Supratext, to San Francisco Girls’ Chorus with Valerie Sainte-Agathe and David Coulter improvising on a musical saw for the exuberant, fearless spirit they brought to the winning work.’
Such a random winner. The piece – anonymous and not worth a 100,000 price
It’s not $100,000! It’s only $100.00. Read the post again!
It is $100k
She writes the meanwhile well-known Eastern-European meditative music… This is the winning piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzz_mPQeuxE
The fizzling an fumbling around seems a bit superfluous….
Also strange that from all life that is interconnected, the meaning of words is excluded, while the meaning of words is surely part of life, at least for humans.
I think this piece is much better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsFP66f4Tb8
Yet, a very gifted lady…. No single echo of Times Square rush hour in her music….. clearly the fruit of intense interiority. (I don’t think she needs the larmoyant glissandi though.)
Only, a rather shabby $ 100 to be SO grateful for….. it seems that Grawemeyer is in financial trouble.
Oh… I see the missing zero has been added.
In my view she deserves it, but rather for having written that “Dozivanje anđela” work. She is really, truly gifted… a quite rare phenomenon: a gifted composer.
Mostly, living composers are underpaid in case they are paid at all, or they have to pay themselves to get their work played or recorded somewhere,… So the Grawemeyer also has a symbolic meaning as a public encouragement to take composers’ payments seriously, in a music ‘business’ where most of the money (very much!) goes to performers and upkeep of halls and tours etc. etc.
Sorry….who?
As is the case for every single competition on earth these days – it’s all rigged. No matter how much they publicly claim it isn’t.
How to win? Back door connections, briberies, and blackmail. Do all that first and then think of an alibi to claim it was all fair. Repeat ad nauseam.
@bryn yeah? And who are you?
It strikes my ears as banal beyond words. Is this the best they could come up with ?!
A truly gifted, hardworking composer with decades worth of experience and a substantial catalogue of works. Definitely not random. Congratulations!!
Let me give you a little bachground. At young age she tried to enter the Moscow Conservatory but was denied for not being talentet. Afterwords she went to USA and build a carreer. The awarded composition is ok, given that she usually writes like she is stil in high-school. Americans what are you doing, couldn’t you come up with something better??
Most of contemporary composers in the USA, it seems to me, write social justice music to liberate suppressed communities. The very rare serious talent writes in his own private world, without bothering himself about the ills of society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq4DZEd_S94
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX5bRhy1DUo&t=0s
@Max – Get over it, America came up with a winner. “Talentet”? After you learn to recheck for proper spelling, you might learn to control your envy.
@Michael – I’m sorry for my spelling, English is not my first language. And belive me, I know damn well what I’m talking about. Cheers ×
@Michael – And Michael just one more thing, please take a look at Hilary’s comment, she hit a point perfectly. “Banal beoynd words”, a perfect description of the majority of the winners work.
Cheers ×