“Du Yun, a 39-year-old composer, musician and performance artist, today won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera Angel’s Bone,” reports Tom Huizenga on Monday (4/10) at NPR. “The Pulitzer jury describes the piece as a bold work ‘that integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world.’ Angel’s Bone, which has a libretto by the versatile Royce Vavrek (Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves and David T. Little’s Dog Days), was commissioned by New York’s Prototype Festival and Trinity Wall Street, which staged the world premiere Jan. 6, 2016. The opera tells of a middle-American couple who find a pair of angels dropped into their backyard. They nurse the angels back to health—only to clip their wings and exploit them for money…. Du Yun, a native of Shanghai but now in New York, has released a pop album of her own, but she’s also been commissioned by American orchestras such as the Detroit and Seattle Symphonies…. Winning the award won’t change Du Yun. ‘I’ll still be me—who is very plugged into social change,’ she said.” Click here for more about 2017 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Posted April 17, 2017
