“When the violinist Leila Josefowicz was given the $100,000 Avery Fisher Prize on Thursday evening, she was at David Geffen Hall with the New York Philharmonic performing Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D—which counts almost as early music for her,” writes Michael Cooper in Thursday’s (10/4) New York Times. “Ms. Josefowicz is one of classical music’s great champions of the new…. John Adams … wrote ‘Scheherazade.2,’ a dramatic portrait of a woman confronting oppression, for her in 2015…. Ms. Josefowicz, 40, said that she grew enamored of new music at a crucial turning point: as she was making the transition from child prodigy to mature artist…. She has championed composers including Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey, Luca Francesconi and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who wrote his Violin Concerto for her…. Winning the prestigious Fisher prize also earns Ms. Josefowicz a place on a plaque in Geffen Hall … alongside past recipients including the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the pianist Emanuel Ax, and the violinists Midori and Joshua Bell…. She is already planning to perform more new works, ‘to invite audiences to not listen with familiarity, to have them listen with curiosity, with a sense of adventure, with a sense of spontaneity.’ ”
Posted October 5, 2018
