Musical America Announces 2012 Awards

Musical America, now in its third century as the indispensable resource for the performing arts, today announced the winners of the annual Musical America Awards, recognizing artistic excellence and achievement in the arts.

The announcement coincides with the publication of the 2012 Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, which, in addition to its comprehensive industry listings, pays homage to each of these artists in its editorial pages.

The annual Musical America Awards will be presented in a special ceremony at Lincoln Center on December 5.

MUSICIANS OF THE YEAR: David FinckEL AND WU HAN

For the first time in the history of these awards, Musical America honors two musicians on its cover: cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. Critics have praised their boldness, imagination, and collaborative intimacy, but their performing virtuosity is only the starting point of their achievements. Their artistic direction of such important organizations as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, as well as a history of innovation in programming, recording, and outreach, have combined to create a revolution in the traditionally quiet world of chamber music--in the process building new audiences and rearing a new wave of players. David Finckel received his first cello at age 10 and at 17 became the first American student of the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1979 he became cellist of the Emerson String Quartet (Musical America's Ensemble of the Year in 2000). Wu Han came to the United States from her native Taiwan at age 20, subsequently studying with Lilian Kallir and Leon Fleisher at the Aspen and Marlboro Music Schools. This dynamic husband-and-wife duo was first to initiate its own Internet-based record label, ArtistLed. Now in the 30th year of their musical collaboration, Finckel says, "passing the torch became a huge priority in our lives. There is nothing more gratifying. We are in a blessed position."
COMPOSER OF THE YEAR: Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk has been a source of amazement in American new music for nearly half a century, and she has the accolades to prove it: a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, marathon retrospective concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, a prestigious record label (ECM), commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Kronos Quartet, and Houston Grand Opera. Her wide-ranging influence has reached pop, jazz, and the visual arts. Being a composer who is, in addition, a singer, keyboardist, dancer, choreographer, director, and film maker, the impetus for her music is often part of an all-embracing theatrical concept. It would be hard to locate another composer of her originality or spiritual depth in the Western classical tradition who has used her body to Monk's degree, to make music.
CONDUCTOR OF THE YEAR: JAAP VAN ZWEDEN

Jaap van Zweden was concertmaster of Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw when Leonard Bernstein encouraged him to study conducting, and he is now in demand throughout the world. His music-making is hailed internationally for its intense discipline as well as passion and tenderness. Under his leadership for five years, the Dallas Symphony plays like one of the world's great orchestras, as critics noted in a performance at Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music festival last May. He is a favorite guest conductor at the Chicago Symphony, where he will lead three weeks of concerts this season, and he also appears with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and St. Louis. A European tour with Dallas is planned for 2013.
INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR: GIL SHAHAM

Gil Shaham celebrated the 30th anniversary of his first public performance last year. Now 40, he is a familiar soloist on television broadcasts and has received such esteemed awards as the Avery Fisher Prize in 2008 and the Premio Internazionale of Siena's Accademia Chigiana in 1992. Praised for his uncommon balance of virtuosity and warmth, he has embarked on an imaginative retrospective of the remarkable series of violin concertos composed in the 1930s: Berg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Barber, Walton, Prokofiev Second, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto funebre, with many others to come. He has amassed a discography of over 20 CDs for Deutsche Grammophon and now records for his own label, Canary Records.
VOCALIST OF THE YEAR: JONAS KAUFMANN

Jonas Kaufmann has triumphed in a wide-ranging repertory that has included Werther in Paris, Tosca and Traviata at La Scala, and Lohengrin at Bayreuth. The secret of his success--apart from being, in the words of one critic, "a great, great artist"--is his refusal to be typed as a "French tenor," an "Italian tenor," or a "German tenor." At the Metropolitan Opera his future was cemented over the last two seasons in Tosca and Die Walküre, and he will star in new productions annually for as far as the eye can see. He made his New York recital debut on the Met stage in October, and he sings the title role in the company's new production of Gounod's Faust, opening on November 29.
ABOUT MUSICAL AMERICA WORLDWIDE
Founded as a weekly newspaper in 1898, Musical America through the years has appeared in a variety of formats. Today, it is both the International Directory of the Performing Arts and MusicalAmerica.com.
The annual Directory, known as the "bible" of the industry, features over 14,000 detailed listings of worldwide arts organizations, with over 8,000 artists indexed both alphabetically and categorically. The first Directory was published in 1960, which is also when the tradition of choosing a Musician of the Year began. (A complete list is below). Awards for Instrumentalist, Conductor, Composer, and Vocalist of the Year date from 1992; Ensemble of the Year from 1995. All are available at www.musicalamerica.com/pages/?pagename=honorees.

Returning to Musical America's newspaper roots, MusicalAmerica.com was launched in December 1998 and now publishes up to six performing arts news stories daily, by national and international correspondents around the globe. Most of the Directory listings are also available at www.musicalamerica.com.

Musical America is published by UBM Global Trade (www.ubmglobaltrade.com), a subsidiary of United Business Media plc (www.unitedbusinessmedia.com) and a leading data publisher, information services provider, and conference producer in the business-to-business community.

Musicians of the Year
1960: Leonard Bernstein
1961: Leontyne Price
1962: Igor Stravinsky
1963: Erich Leinsdorf
1964: Benjamin Britten
1965: Vladimir Horowitz
1966: Yehudi Menuhin
1967: Leopold Stokowski
1968-69: Birgit Nilsson
1970: Beverly Sills
1971: Michael Tilson Thomas
1972: Pierre Boulez
1973: George Balanchine
1974: Sarah Caldwell
1975: Eugene Ormandy
1976: Arthur Rubinstein
1977: Plácido Domingo
1978: Alicia de Larrocha
1979: Rudolf Serkin
1980: Zubin Mehta
1981: Itzhak Perlman
1982: Jessye Norman
1983: Nathan Milstein
1984: James Levine
1985: Philip Glass
1986: Isaac Stern
1987: Mstislav Rostropovich
1988: Sir Georg Solti
1989: Leonard Bernstein
1990: Herbert von Karajan
1991: Gian Carlo Menotti
1992: Robert Shaw
1993: Kurt Masur
1994: Christa Ludwig
1995: Marilyn Horne
1996: The Juilliard String Quartet
1997: James Galway
1998: Seiji Ozawa
1999: André Previn
2000: Carnegie Hall
2001: Martha Argerich
2002: Sir Simon Rattle
2003: Kronos Quartet
2004: Wynton Marsalis
2005: Karita Mattila
2006: Esa-Pekka Salonen
2007: Bernard Haitink
2008: Anna Netrebko
2009: Yo-Yo Ma
2010: Riccardo Muti
2011: Anne-Sophie Mutter