The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes were announced May 6 and composer, multi-instrumentalist, and University of Pennsylvania Presidential Assistant Professor of Music Tyshawn Sorey—who visited Peabody last fall for master classes and open rehearsals with the Jazz Studies department— received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Adagio (For Wadda Leo Smith). The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, who co-commissioned the work with the Lucerne Festival, performed the US debut in March 2023.
Also in March 2023, the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed the US debut of faculty artist Felipe Lara’s Double concerto for esperanza spalding, Claire Chase, and large orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This half-hour work, co-commissioned by the LA Philharmonic and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, was one of the two 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music finalists.
The other finalist was faculty artist Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Paper Pianos, a multimedia exploration of dislocation shaped by interviews with refugees and resettlement workers. This weekend, the New York Philharmonic plays the world premiere of Kouyoumdjian’s ANDOUNI (Homeless), featuring photography by photojournalist Scout Tufankjian, a Philharmonic commission through its Project 19 initiative to commission and premiere 19 new works by 19 women composers.