Finalist: The Blind Banister, by Timo Andres (Andres & Sons Bakery)
A three-movement piece inspired by Beethoven that takes listeners on a beautiful quest in which they rise and fall with the music's ascending and descending scales.
Winners
Prize Winner in Music in 2016:
Henry Threadgill
Recording released on May 26, 2015 by Zooid, a highly original work in which notated music and improvisation mesh in a sonic tapestry that seems the very expression of modern American life (Pi Recordings).
Music
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Music in 2016:
Carter Pann
Recording released on September 8, 2015 by Capitol Quartet, a suite that imagines its four saxophonists as mechanics engaged in a rhythmic interplay of precision and messiness that is by turns bubbly, pulsing, dreamy and nostalgic (Blue Griffin).
The Jury
The Jury
Julia Wolfe(Chair)*
Composer; Artistic Director, Bang on a Can; Associate Professor of Music Composition
William Banfield
recording artist and composer; professor of liberal arts
Scott Cantrell
classical music critic
Regina Carter
jazz violinist
Pamela Tatge
director, Center for the Arts
Winners in Music
Julia Wolfe
A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.
John Luther Adams
A haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels.
Caroline Shaw
A highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects (New Amsterdam Records).
Kevin Puts
A stirring opera that recounts the true story of a spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and Germans during World War I, displaying versatility of style and cutting straight to the heart. Libretto by Mark Campbell (Aperto Press).
2016 Prize Winners
William Finnegan
A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.