Violin Community News 2010, Op. 14

April 14, 2010 at 4:41 PM

Congratulations to composer Jennifer Higdon, who was awarded this year's Pulitzer Prize in music for her Violin Concerto. The work was commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony and the Curtis Institute of Music and written for violinist Hilary Hahn, who spoke with us about the piece right before performing its premiere in February 2009 with the Indianapolis Symphony. Higdon will be awarded $10,000 for the concerto, which the Pulitzer committee called “a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity.” Other pieces nominated for the 2010 award were "String Quartet No. 3," by Fred Lerdahl and "Steel Hammer," by Julia Wolfe. Here is an interview with Higdon in the The Philadelphia Inquirer this week about winning the Pulitzer, and here is a video interview that Hilary did with Jennifer right after the first performance.

Now this is downright heroic: Joshua Bell raised $24,500 to keep music alive in the public schools in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, according to the Bloomington Herald-Times. Proceeds from his sold-out concert Tuesday night at Indiana University's Musical Arts Center will go to Monroe County Community School Corp., which said it needed $20,000 to keep its music program going next year. Here is a review of the concert from the Indiana Daily Student (check out the great picture by Sevil Mahfoozi in that article).

From SAM MIHAILOFF
Posted on April 14, 2010 at 5:04 PM

Joshua Bell very often gets a lot of flack for his facial expressions...who cares. He plays like an angel and he is really down-to-earth as well

From Michael Pijoan
Posted on April 15, 2010 at 4:26 AM

Thank you very much for this information, Laurie. There's just one minor thing. I'd like to read your discussion with Hilary Hahn about the concerto but the link isn't going through. It's the part where it says "spoke with us about the piece". Thank you very much and blessings upon Joshua Bell for being such a nice guy eh? It made my day to read about that.

From Robert Niles
Posted on April 15, 2010 at 5:53 PM

Fixed.

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Violin Community News 2010, Op. 14

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