(Posted this afternoon to the TONY Blog)
Congratulations are in order for David Lang, who has just won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his vocal piece, The Little Match Girl Passion. Lang is best known as a member of the visionary collective Bang on a Can.
Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Little Match Girl Passion was first performed at Zankel Hall on October 27, 2007, by sopranos Mirian Andersén and Bente Vist, tenor Christopher Watson and bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen. And it just so happens that the piece is one of those commissions that Carnegie Hall recently made available for streaming on its website -- making the frustration of going for years without being able to hear a Pulitzer winner a thing of the past.
So here's to David Lang... and for that matter, to Carnegie Hall. Go here to read more about Lang's piece, and to listen to it, as well.
Warm congratulations also go to to Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, whose marvelous and much-lauded book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was a finalist in the General Nonfiction category. Here is a fine profile of Ross by Time Out New York music writer Hank Shteamer, which ran when the book appeared last October.
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