NEW YORK, NY (Musical
America International Directory of the Performing Arts) - The Musical
America International Directory of the Performing Arts honored its 2007 Award recipients at a ceremony held today at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Space. The top honor of Musician of the Year went to the eminent Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink, recently appointed principal conductor of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Also recognized were
William Bolcom, Composer of the Year; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Instrumentalist of the Year;
Barbara Cook, Vocalist of the Year; and Michael M. Kaiser, Impresario of the Year.
Musician of the Year: Bernard Haitink
In a distinguished 50-year career, Bernard Haitink has been a welcome guest at every major international orchestra. His three-year appointment in Chicago is only the most recent of many prestigious posts: music director of Amsterdam's famed Concertgebouw Orchestra (1964-88), London Philharmonic (1967-79), Glyndebourne Festival (1978-88), and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden (1988-2002). He has maintained a close relationship with the Boston Symphony for over three decades and served as principal guest conductor from 1995 to 2004. Haitink's career may be traced by his hundreds of recordings for Philips with the Concertgebouw, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and Boston Symphony. Opera recordings include works by Wagner, Mozart, Britten, Verdi, R. Strauss, Bartok, and Janacek on EMI Classics, and Debussy on Naive. Most recently he has recorded a highly acclaimed Beethoven symphony cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra for its own label, LSO LIVE.
Composer of the Year: William Bolcom
This is a banner year for American composer William Bolcom. Last month he received a National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony; Placido Domingo sang the premiere of his Canciones de Lorca in October; and he is currently at work on his fourth opera and eighth symphony, which will receive their premieres during his 70th-birthday year in 2008. A prolific composer of operas, symphonies, hundreds of songs, numerous concertos, chamber and solo works, and cabaret and theater pieces, he is perhaps best known for his monumental Songs of Innocence and Experience, a 1984 setting of William Blake's 46-poem, two-part cycle. The recent Naxos recording conducted by Leonard Slatkin garnered three Grammy Awards.
Instrumentalist of the Year: Pierre-Laurent Aimard
"New music and old, newly viewed," sums up the ear-opening artistry of French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. He has worked with and been praised by such leading composers of our time as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, and Gyorgy Ligeti. He is equally acclaimed in mainstream repertory, notably on CD in Beethoven concertos and Schumann piano music. His growing international renown is further demonstrated by auspicious residencies this season at Carnegie Hall and at the Berlin Philharmonic.
Vocalist of the Year: Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook is celebrated as the quintessential voice of Broadway's golden age. She is famed as the original Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1956) and Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1957), for which she won a Tony as best featured actress in a musical, and more recently as Sally Durant in the legendary New York Philharmonic concert presentation of Stephen Sondheim's Follies (1985). Nightclub, cabaret, and concert performances have also revealed her mastery of the classic pop ballad and contemporary musical theater, and in 2006 she became the first "popular" singer officially presented in concert by the Metropolitan Opera.
Impresario of the Year: Michael M. Kaiser
In his five years as president of Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, Michael M. Kaiser has been widely praised for broadening and unifying the Center's constituents, establishing an individual profile to the Center's offerings, and providing increased financial stability to operations. In the words of the Washington Post's Tim Page, "he has transformed the programming, and Washington is a more diverse, fertile, and altogether more interesting place for the arts than it has ever been."
