Andrew Norman received Musical America’s 2017 Composer of the Year award on December 8 in New York City, and the text of his acceptance speech was reprinted in Friday’s (12/9) NewMusicBox. “I feel completely undeserving of this award, and of all the other attention I have received recently. I have been given so much over my lifetime…. I have been blessed with way more than my fair share of opportunities in this field…. I’ve also, and perhaps most importantly, been given the opportunity to fail, to fail repeatedly, and to fail in public…. This gift of failure also puts me in an incredibly privileged position. I think about all the composers who have not been granted the same good fortune that I have …. We are not just the inheritors and interpreters of a tradition, we are also the definers of that tradition…. I believe there are Mozarts and Beethovens born every day, and it is our foremost responsibility as musical citizens to find them, to cultivate them, to give them plenty of opportunities to succeed and to fail, and ultimately to let them take the art form to places we cannot yet imagine.”
Posted December 15, 2016
