The Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City “announced Monday night that it had raised $1 million to establish a new Cage Cunningham Fellowship, and that the first recipient would be the Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov, who plans to use his award to commission new works,” writes Michael Cooper in Monday’s (12/14) New York Times. “The fellowship is designed to support artists who continue John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s commitment to innovation. Mr. Lubimov—who in the 1960s gave the Soviet premieres of a number of daring Western works—will use his $50,000 award to commission new pieces from five composers. Three are Russian—Anton Batagov, Pavel Karmanov and Sergei Zagny—and two, Bryce Dessner and Julia Wolfe, are American. (Ms. Wolfe won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her oratorio ‘Anthracite Fields.’) Mikhail Baryshnikov, the artistic director of the center, said in a statement that Mr. Lubimov was ‘an ideal fit’ for the first Cage Cunningham Fellowship … Mr. Lubimov is known for playing an unusually broad repertoire…. In the 1960s, the center said, he gave the Soviet premieres of works by Cage, Charles Ives, Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern and Karlheinz Stockhausen.”
Posted December 16, 2015
