In Monday’s (7/19) Asheville Citizen-Times (North Carolina), Rob Neufeld writes, “Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1945 for his ballet, ‘Appalachian Spring.’ Eighteen years earlier, Lamar Stringfield, of Asheville, had won a fellowship from the Pulitzer Prize jury for ‘the student of music in America who may be deemed the most talented and deserving.’ Stringfield, the committee noted, already had 41 compositions to his credit, ‘many of which have been constructed by the use of folk music that has been preserved by the mountaineers of Western North Carolina.’ … He was ahead of the curve. … The Asheville Symphony acknowledges Stringfield as it opens its 50th anniversary season on Sept.18. Included with the program will be a book of memories, written by Arnold Wengrow from interviews with longtime participants. Stringfield had been alive when the new Asheville Symphony had begun as an application for incorporation in 1958. … The new organization took its name from the one that Stringfield had organized in 1927, when he had 24 musicians combine for a big, conducted sound. Five years later, he left to establish the North Carolina Symphony, the first state symphony in the country.”
Posted July 23, 2010
