American Classical Music Hall of Fame Inducts New Members

On Thursday, May 12, 2011, the American Classical Music Hall of Fame held an induction ceremony in honor of their 2010 inductees at The Juilliard School in New York City. The inductees are conductor Marin Alsop, composers William Bolcom and Philip Glass, the Emerson String Quartet, educator Dr. Joseph William Polisi, and the music service organizations ASCAP and BMI.

On hand to accept their awards were the Emerson String Quartet, Dr. Polisi, ASCAP, and BMI. Philip Glass will be honored in Cincinnati this fall, William Bolcom in Ann Arbor, and Marin Alsop at a location and time to be determined.

The American Classical Music Hall of Fame, a national institution, is dedicated to honoring and celebrating the many facets of American classical music. The Hall of Fame seeks to recognize those who have made significant contributions to classical music and by doing so aspires to sustain and build interest in classical music. Inductees to the Hall of Fame are nominated by a specialist field of musicians, music educators, leaders in the music industry and its living inductees. Nominations are made in six categories: composer, conductor, performer, educator, performing ensemble and institution devoted to music. Nominations are reviewed by the distinguished National Artistic Directorate members who recommend a final slate for endorsement by the Board of Trustees of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

The Emerson String Quartet stands alone in the history of string quartets with an incomparable list of achievements over three decades: nine Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album, an unprecedented honor for a chamber music group), three Gramophone Awards, the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and an international reputation for groundbreaking chamber music projects.

Dr. Joseph William Polisi became the sixth and current president of The Juilliard School in September 1984, bringing to that position his previous experience as a college administrator, a writer in the fields of music, public policy and the arts, and an accomplished bassoonist.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a membership association of more than 410,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers of every kind of music. Through agreements with affiliated international societies, ASCAP also represents hundreds of thousands of music creators worldwide. ASCAP is the only U.S. performing rights organization created and controlled by composers, songwriters and music publishers, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the membership.

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is an American performing right organization that represents more than 475,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music and more than 6.5 million works. BMI has represented the most popular and beloved music from around the world for 70 years. The U.S. corporation collects license fees from businesses that use music, which it then distributes as royalties to the musical creators and copyright owners it represents.

In September 2007, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the twelfth music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the first woman to head a major American orchestra. This mirrored her ongoing success in the United Kingdom where she was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 2002-08 and is now Conductor Emeritus.

Named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America, and honored with multiple Grammy Awards for his groundbreaking setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Bolcom is a composer of cabaret songs, concertos, sonatas, operas, symphonies, and much more. He was awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Twelve New Etudes for piano. As a pianist he has recorded for Advance, Jazzology, Musical Heritage, Nonesuch, Vox, and Omega.

Philip Glass was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, The Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty operas; eight symphonies (with others already on the way); piano concertos; film soundtracks; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.

For more information on the Classical Music Hall of Fame, you can visit their Web site at http://www.americanclassicalmusic.org/01/index.html.

Kirshbaum Demler & Associates
JJP