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The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Music
For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

Angel's Bone, by Du Yun

Premiered on January 6, 2016, at the Prototype Festival, 3LD Arts and Technology Center, New York City, a bold operatic work that integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world. Libretto by Royce Vavrek.

Du Yun accepts the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Angel's Bone from Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger.

Winning Work

Angel's Bone

By

Du Yun

Abigail Fischer sings "Mrs. X.E.'s Mirror Scene" from Angel's Bone. Contributors include Julian Wachner, music direction; Trinity Wall Street Choir; Michael McQuilken, stage direction. Filmed live in performance at 3-Legged Dog in NYC during the Prototype Festival 2016.

Angel's Bone follows the plight of two fallen angels whose nostalgia for earthly delights finds them far from heaven. They are found battered and bruised by a man and his wife, known only as Mr. and Mrs. X.E., who have longed for a better life than their modest middle-class status and bring them into their home and set out to nurse them back to health: they bathe them, wash the dirt from their nails...then lock them in the root cellar and decide that this is their chance to be wealthy and legendary.

The story is told through Royce Vavrek's riveting libretto and Du Yun's eclectic music: part chamber music, theatre, pop music, opera, cabaret, and involving visual arts and noise, forming a harmonious and moving piece.

-- from the Prototype Festival website

 

Biography

Du Yun, born and raised in Shanghai, China, currently based in New York, is a composer, multi-instrumentalists, performance artist, activist and curator for new music, working at the intersection of orchestral, opera, chamber music, theatre, cabaret, oral tradition, public performances, sound installation, electronics and noise.

Hailed by The New York Times as a leading figure in China’s new generation of composers, Du Yun’s music is championed by some of today’s finest performing artists, ensembles, orchestras and organizations. The New York Times says Du Yun as “cutting-edge… to whom the term ‘young composer’ could hardly do justice; ” “re-invents herself daily… so does her music,” (TimeOut-NYC); “heralds a significant voice” (Financial Times) “…the strongest impression made yet” (by De Rode Leeuw, Amsterdam) and “…one senses the exceptional ear, exploration and the results are impeccably powerful” (by Le Devoir, Montréal); Musical America, ASCAP Playback Magazine, NPR, Sveriges Radio (Sweden), Radio Canada and others have featured her profile. Known as “protean” and “chameleonic”, the National Public Radio (USA) has recently voted her as one of 100 composers under 40.

Selected performing groups and venues: Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Festival d’Avignon, Darmstadt Germany, Musica Nova Helsinki, Salle Playel Paris, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, RedCat (LA), Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Wigmore Hall London, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Philharmonie Luxembourg, BAM NextWave, Centro Nacional De la Música (Argentina), the Camerata Aberta of Brazil, Aspekte Salzburg, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Whitney Museum, Berkeley Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, Asia Society New York & Hong Kong, Shanghai Symphony Hall.

Opera: Zolle, Angel’s Bone (upcoming at LA Opera).

In Art: Guangzhou Art Triennial, Shanghai Himalayas Center. Her ongoing collaborations of installation-performance-video with the Pakistani visual artist Shahzia Sikander have been on view at the the Guggenheim Bilbao, MAXXI Rome, London Art Frieze, Asia Society Hong Kong, Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum, the Tokyo Contemporary Museum of Art, Pace Foundation (San Antonio), the Sharjah Biennial (UAE), Auckland Art Triennial (New Zealand), Istanbul Biennial (Turkey), Dhaka Art Summit (Bangladesh), and Philadelphia Museum of Art (permanent collection). ArtForum writes the collaboration as “standout, sound utilized to its best effect.”

Off Broadway credits: Original Music for David Henry Hwang’s Kung Fu (Signature Theatre); Original Music for Chiori Miyagawa Hiroshima Mon Amour (Ohio Theatre); Regional: Original Music for Stan Lai, Writing on the Water (Above Theatre, Shanghai).

Du Yun's music can be heard on Deutsche Grammophon (a Grammny Award), New Focus, Oxingale and ATMA Classique. Faculty at State University of New York – Purchase; artistic director of MATA, a pioneering international festival dedicated to commissioning and presenting young composers from around the world.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Music in 2017:

Ashley Fure

Premiered on June 5, 2016 at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, a mesmerizing orchestral piece, at once rigorous and evocative, by a sure-handed composer who takes her inspiration from Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Kate Soper

Premiered on December 9, 2016, at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, a breakthrough work that plumbs the composer’s fertile musical imagination to explore the relationships between idea and expression, meaning and language.

The Jury

Carol J. Oja(Chair)

William Powell Mason Professor of Music

John V. Brown, Jr.

Director of the Jazz Program and Associate Professor of the Practice of Music

Jennifer Higdon*

composer

Alex Ross

Music Critic

Evan Ziporyn

Director, Center for Art, Science & Technology and Kenan Sabin Distinguished Professor of Music

Winners in Music

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).
2015

Julia Wolfe

A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.
2014

John Luther Adams

A haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels.
2013

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).
See All Music

2017 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

C. J. Chivers

For showing, through an artful accumulation of fact and detail, that a Marine’s postwar descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD.
Commentary

Peggy Noonan

For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.
Criticism

Hilton Als

For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.
Editorial Writing

Art Cullen

For editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.
See All 2017 Winners