Skip to main content
The 1997 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Music
For distinguished musical composition by an American in any of the larger forms including chamber, orchestral, choral, opera, song, dance, or other forms of musical theatre, which has had its first performance in the United States during the year, Five thousand dollars ($5,000).

Blood on the Fields, by Wynton Marsalis

Premiered on January 28, 1997 at Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Columbia University President George Rupp (left) presents Wynton Marsalis with the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Winning Work

By

Blood on the Fields is presented in a 1997 recording on Columbia Records by Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

 

Biography

Wynton Marsalis has been appropriately described as a level raiser whose breadth of talent is equated with genius. It has been said that he is an American musician for whom greatness is not merely possible but inevitable. To date Wynton has produced twenty-two jazz and nine classical records. With The Majesty Of the Blues, Wynton re-introduced America to the joy in New Orleans jazz. In Levee Low Moan, Thick in the South and other blues recordings, Wynton extended the jazz musician's interplay with the blues. With Cih Movement, In This House, On This Morning and Blood on the Fields he invented a fresh conception for extended form compositions.

Marsalis has won eight Grammy Awards, earning the distinction of being the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records. He is also the only artist ever to have won Grammy Awards in five consecutive years. Other awards include Japan's Swing Journal Silver Trophy, the Grand Prix Du Disque, the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Edison Award.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Music in 1997:

John Musto

Premiered on March 2, 1996, by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, in Jacksonville, Fla.

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski

Premiered on April 12, 1996, by the Minnesota Orchestra, Minneapolis.

The Jury

Robert Ward(chair )*

composer, Mary Duke Biddle professor of music emeritus

John Harbison*

professor of humanities

John Lewis

composer, musician

Howard Reich

jazz critic

Joseph Schwantner*

professor of music

Winners in Music

1996

George Walker

Premiered on February 1, 1996, in Boston by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was commissioned by that orchestra.
1995

Morton Gould

Premiered on March 10, 1994, by the National Symphony Orchestra at The John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C..
1994

Gunther Schuller

Premiered on December 2, 1993, in Louisville, Ky. Performed and commissioned by The Louisville Orchestra.
See All Music

1997 Prize Winners

Beat Reporting

Byron Acohido

For his coverage of the aerospace industry, notably an exhaustive investigation of rudder control problems on the Boeing 737, which contributed to new FAA requirements for major improvements.
See All 1997 Winners