Paola Prestini | |
|---|---|
 Prestini pictured in 2016 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 1975 Italy |
| Genres | Classical music, other |
| Occupations | Composer, musician |
| Spouse | Jeffrey Zeigler |
| Website | www |
Paola Prestini (born 1975) is a composer of classical music. [1] The New York Times referred to Prestini as "the enterprising composer and impresario" and a "human resources alchemist". [2] In 2011, she was named one of the Top 100 Composers in the World under 40 by National Public Radio. [3]
Prestini was born in Italy, [1] and graduated from the Juilliard School, [1] where she "had already developed a reputation as a formidable impresario even before she graduated". [4] She studied there under Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. She was also a PD Soros Fellow. [5] Most recently she was named one of “Musical America 30 Innovators”. [6]
In 1999, while still a student, Prestini co-founded VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary arts company that established the annual 21c Liederabend festival, which went on to be performed at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, [7] and at BAM's 2013 Next Wave Festival (in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects), [8] the Colorado Project (for which the New York Times called her music "downright gorgeous") [9] premiered at Houston's Da Camera Series, The Met Museum, Stanford University and the Kennedy Center, and a variety of other multimedia collaborations. Her Hubble Cantata was performed in the largest to date communal VR experience at Bric's Celebrate Brooklyn; the New Yorker said of the event "six thousand of us together, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, [were] floating around the Orion Nebula...Crescendos, beauty, drama…It astounded me, this feeling of floating above Earth, and tears began to emerge from my cardboard goggles..." [10] while Hyperallergic called it "a thundering opus”. [11] Nature Magazine called it "a highly collaborative meld of science and art." [12]
She is also the founding artistic director and CEO of National Sawdust. Her programming endeavors there have "earned her large stores of gratitude in the new-music world". [13] She has been quoted by Timeout NY as "Paola Prestini is a name to know in New York new music, as she works to secure a home for innovative composition and performance in Williamsburg". [14]
She sits on the strategy committee for Prototype Festival, [15] is a regular curator at John Zorn's The Stone, and also sits on the board of National Sawdust. [16] Some of the compositions she has written or is working on include Gilgamesh, Laybyrinth, The Hubble Cantata, Aging Magician, Epiphany, The Colorado , Oceanic Verses, Two Oars, and Mass Re-Imaginings. [17] Prestini's music has been commissioned by and performed at the following institutes: Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera and the Kronos Quartet, and in non-U.S. venues. Recordings of her music have been released on VIA Records, Innova, and Tzadik Records, and her compositions have been published in the Arcana series by Hips Road. She is the editor of the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composer handbook.
Of her recent works which focus on the voice, Aging Magician represents her penchant for long process, interdisciplinary work that she self initiates and co-produces. [18] Of Aging Magician, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times stated that “[Prestini’s] choral writing is ethereal, unfolding in long-spun lines and chantlike phrases. Yet there are complex stretches of cluster chords that the choristers sing with precision.“ The Boston Globe called her opera Gilgamesh “an enchanted exploration of the eternal mysteries….[Prestini's] atmospheric but tuneful music for “Gilgamesh” inhabited an indie-opera rainforest of its own…” [19] and The Boston Music Intelligencer said of it “It sparkles, both literally and figuratively…Her melodies entice and speak of a modern, yet accessible flare…it holds its intensity with valor through its end.” [20] Upcoming large scale work include a new installment of the River Project with filmmaker Murat Eyuboglu (filmmaker of the Colorado) based on the Amazon, which currently won a 2017 NEA award, [21] and Two Oars, a new opera with Robert Wilson, and the cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. [22]
The New York Times referred to Prestini as "the enterprising composer and impresario" and a "human resources alchemist". [2] In 2011, she was named one of the Top 100 Composers in the World under 40 by National Public Radio. [3] In 2001 Prestini was one of eight of America's “most promising composers in the early stages of their professional careers [to be] selected out of nearly 200 submissions received from around the country." [23] Excerpts from The Hubble Cantata were praised as "the high point of the evening visually as well as musically” at Liederabend, Opus L.A. in April 2016. [24]
Prestini received the Victor Herbert Award ASCAP in 2014 [25] and the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award for double string quartet and double bass (in 2002). [26] She has also been the recipient of the NEFA grant Award Grants for Aging Magician, in the category ranging from $90,000-$130,000. [27] She was a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant Awardee in both 2006 and 2009.
In 2009, Prestini received first prize for her work Nightsong: For Solo Marimba in the Marimba/Cello Duo Category Classical Marimba League Composition, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant Award. [28] She also received an American Music Center CAP Grant in 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2010; the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust for New Music Grant in 2008; the Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant in 2008; [29] the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant/Swing Space Award in 2006; and the Monumental Brass Quintet Women's Commissioning Award in 2003. She also received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and other fellowships from Carnegie Hall and the Sundance Institute, among others.
Prestini has held residencies at Florida's Hermitage Artist Retreat, LMCC Governor’s Island, MASS MoCA, The Park Avenue Armory, The Watermill Center and Wyoming's Ucross Foundation.
Prestini lives in Brooklyn, with her husband cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and her son Tommaso. [1] [30]
Jocelyn Pook is a composer who is known for her scores for many films, including Eyes Wide Shut, The Merchant of Venice and The Wife. Her principal instrument is the viola. Her scores and performances have been widely recorded, and have received multiple awards.
Tania León is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Hila Plitmann is an Israeli-American two-time Grammy Award-winning operatic soprano, songwriter, and actress specializing in the performance of new works.
VisionIntoArt (VIA) is a non-profit new music and interdisciplinary arts production company based in the New York City. The group was founded in 1999 by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Paola Prestini while they were students at the Juilliard School.
Royce Vavrek is a Canadian-born Brooklyn-based librettist, playwright, dance scenarist, musical theatre writer and filmmaker known for his collaborations with composers David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Mikael Karlsson, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paola Prestini and Du Yun, soprano Lauren Worsham, producers Beth Morrison and Lawrence Edelson, and conductors Steven Osgood, Julian Wachner and Alan Pierson.
Robert Paterson is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.
Emily Jordan Bear is an American composer, pianist, songwriter and singer. After beginning to play the piano and compose music as a small child, Bear made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at the age of five, the youngest performer ever to play there. She gained wider notice from a series of appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show beginning at the age of six. She has since played her own compositions and other works with orchestras and ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz Open Stuttgart. She won two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the youngest person ever to win the award, and also won two Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Awards.
Magos Herrera is a Mexican jazz singer, songwriter, producer, and educator. She sings in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and has collaborated with Javier Limón, saxophonist Tim Ries, Aaron Goldberg, Pedro Aznar, Ed Simon Trio, John Patitucci, Luis Perdomo, Adam Rogers, Tim Hagans, Alex Kautz, composer Paola Prestini, former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeff Zeigler, and many others.
Robert Beaser is an American composer.
Faye-Ellen Silverman is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She is also an author and an educator.
Niloufar Talebi is an author, literary translator, librettist, multidisciplinary artist, and producer. She was born in London to Iranian parents. Her work has been presented by, and/or performed at Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, American Lyric Theater, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Riverside Theatre, Royce Hall, ODC/Dance Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, SOMArts Cultural Center, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Stanford University, and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Sylvia Constantinidis is a Venezuelan-American pianist, composer, and conductor.
Olivia Giovetti is an American author, journalist, music critic and radio personality. She was known as the host of The New Canon, a weekly show as part of the programming for Q2 Music, an affiliate of WQXR-FM in New York. Giovetti has also appeared on-air for WQXR proper and writes for the station's website. Her work with The New Canon has made her a prominent figure within the contemporary classical scene in New York, bringing composers like David Lang, David T. Little, Steven Mackey, and John Luther Adams to wider audiences with interactive interviews. Her work with the station has been featured in notable media publications, including New York magazine, NPR, and Alex Ross's blog "The Rest is Noise."
Missy Mazzoli is an American composer and pianist who is a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music. In 2018, she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band. From 2012-2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer. Mazzoli received a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, and in 2018 was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Composition. In 2018, Mazzoli was named for a two-season term as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mazzoli was named the Bragg Artist-in-Residence at Mount Allison University in Canada beginning in 2022.
Du Yun is a Chinese-born American composer, performer, vocalist and performance artist. She won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera Angel's Bone, with libretto by Royce Vavrek. She was a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. Du Yun was named as one of the 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2018, and received a 2019 Grammy nomination in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her work Air Glow. In its decade review, UK's Classic FM listed Du Yun's winning of the Pulitzer as No. 6 in "10 ways the 2010s changed classical music forever." Rolling Stone Italia named her as one of the women composers who defined the 2010s.
Beth Morrison is an American producer of contemporary opera.
National Sawdust is a nonprofit music producer and venue in Brooklyn, New York with the goal of providing "composers and musicians across genres... a setting where they are given unprecedented support and critical resources essential to create and share their work." The organization is named after its building's original tenant, an early 20th century sawdust factory by the same name. It was founded in 2015 by composer Paola Prestini and attorney Kevin Dolan. Since then, National Sawdust has featured artists and ensembles including Philip Glass, Yo-Yo Ma, Nico Muhly, Yo La Tengo, Eydís Evensen, Chris Thile, Pussy Riot, Caroline Polachek, Tanya Tagaq, Agnes Obel, Joan Tower, John Corigliano, the International Contemporary Ensemble, yMusic, Missy Mazzoli, Royce Vavrek, Du Yun, Karole Armitage, and Anthony Roth Costanzo.
Niloufar Nourbakhsh is a New York City-based Iranian composer and pianist, who founded the Iranian Female Composers Association.
Caroline Mallonée is an American composer best known for her choral works. She is also the artistic director of the Creative Musicians Retreat, part of The Walden School's summer offerings.
Helga Davis is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist who works as an actress, singer, writer and composer, as well as a radio and podcast host.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
