“One of contemporary music’s most prestigious prizes is being awarded to a work that crosses cultural borders,” writes Michael Cooper in Monday’s (12/3) New York Times. “Joël Bons, a Dutch composer, has been awarded the 2019 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for ‘Nomaden,’ an hourlong work featuring a cellist and an ensemble playing a wide array of instruments from across Asia… The Grawemeyer … comes with a $100,000 award. In Mr. Bons, 65, it is going to a composer who has long thought deeply about integrating music from different corners of the world. ‘Nomaden,’ which was written for the French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble, a group of 18 musicians from Asia, the Middle East and Europe, had its premiere at the Cello Biennale in Amsterdam in 2016…. Mr. Bons … was one of the founders of the Amsterdam-based contemporary music group Nieuw Ensemble, and in 2002 founded the Atlas Ensemble. He has championed works by contemporary Chinese composers, and his musical travels have taken him to Syria and Iran.” Bons said his aim with Nomaden “was to create a piece in which the musicians and the instruments, in all their cultural differences, could bloom in full glory.”
Posted December 4, 2018
