Subdivision
| • | 501. Creative Artists | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Mr. Emanuel Ax | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Emanuel Ax is considered to be in the front rank of today’s pianists and has been widely recognized for both solo and chamber work as well as for chamber performance. He has won many awards, including seven Grammy Awards, five of which were for his chamber music (1986, 1987, 1992, 1993, 1996) and the other two were for his solo performances of Haydn (1995, 2004). In 1974, he won the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel-Aviv and in 1979 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. More recently, Columbia University presented him with the Alexander Hamilton Medal for Distinguished Service and Accomplishment (2003) and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007). Ax has performed frequently with APS member Yo-Yo Ma and regularly plays at music festivals such as Mainly Mozart, Ravinia, and Tanglewood. They (Ax and Ma) released Hope Amid Tears in 2021. | |
| 2 | Name: | Mr. Philip Glass | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Philip Glass’s musical life began early; at eight he studied the flute at the Peabody Conservatory and by twelve he had begun composing. After receiving an M.A. in composition from Juilliard in 1961, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and in India with the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. Glass’s composition matured in the early seventies, largely through works written for his own Philip Glass Ensemble. In 1974, with a performance of the complete Music in Twelve Parts at the New York Town Hall, he had his first performance in a traditional concert hall. Two years later Einstein on the Beach premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, bringing Glass accolades from the larger music world. This master work combines disparate media moments in unconventional visual juxtaposition with textless vocal exercises and numerals varying in pitch and rhythm. The operas Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984) followed - the former portraying the early years of Mahatma Gandhi and utilizing a dronelike repetition of symmetrical sequences of chords to achieve haunting and hypnotic powers. In recent years Glass has focused increasingly on composition for theater, film and dance. His film scores have received three Academy Award nominations – for Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002) and Notes on a Scandal (2006) - and his collaborations with the director Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi, et al) are audiovisual tone poems of uncommon elegance and visceral power. All told, over the last 25 years, Glass has composed 22 operas, eight symphonies, 38 film soundtracks, numerous string quartets and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. In addition to his Academy Award nominations, Glass won a Golden Globe Award in 1999, the Asquith Award for Film Music in 2002, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010. He won a New York City Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture in 2013. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1994. | |
| 3 | Name: | Mr. A. R. Gurney | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | Death Date: | June 13, 2017 | | | | | | |
A.R. Gurney was a prolific playwright who dissected the fading folkways of the Northeast's traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant society, of which he himself was a member. Among his plays are Scenes from American Life; The Dining Room; The Cocktail Hour; Love Letters; Slyvia; Later Life; Far East; Ancestral Voices; Big Bill; Mrs. Farnsworth; Indian Blood; Buffalo Gal; The Grand Manner; Black Tie; Heresy, and Family Furniture. He had written three published novels, several television scripts, and the libretto for Michael Torke's Strawberry Fields, commissioned and produced by the New York City Opera. Gurney was a Professor of Literature at M.I.T. before devoting himself full time to the theatre. He is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he has honorary degrees from Williams College and Buffalo State University. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2009. A. R. Gurney died June 13, 2017, at the age of 86, in Manhattan. | |
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