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“MAGICIAN OF
THE VOICE” MEREDITH MONK
TO RECEIVE THE 24th ANNUAL DOROTHY
AND LILLIAN GISH PRIZE
Trailblazing Composer, Singer and
Interdisciplinary Artist
Will Be Honored at October 26 Award Ceremony at
the
Brooklyn Academy of Music
“It is my desire...to give the recipients of the
prize the recognition they deserve,
to bring attention to their contributions to
society and encourage others
to follow in their path.”—Lillian Gish
New York,
NY - The Gish Prize Trust today announced
that the widely influential, utterly inimitable Meredith
Monk has been selected to receive the 24th annual
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, in recognition
of her ongoing achievements as a composer,
singer and interdisciplinary artist. Established
in 1994 through the will of legendary stage and
screen actress Lillian Gish, known as the First
Lady of Cinema, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish
Prize is one of the most prestigious honors
given to artists in the United States and bears
one of the largest cash awards, currently valued
at approximately $250,000.
The Gish Prize is given each year to a highly
accomplished artist from any discipline who has
pushed the boundaries of an art form,
contributed to social change and paved the way
for the next generation. The selection committee
for the 2017 Gish Prize chose Monk from among
more than 66 outstanding finalists in the fields
of visual and performing arts, literature and
arts administration. Monk now joins a list of
honorees that includes Elizabeth LeCompte,
Suzan-Lori Parks, Maya Lin, Anna Deavere Smith,
Spike Lee, Trisha Brown, Laurie Anderson, Frank
Gehry, Peter Sellars and Bob Dylan. JPMorgan
Chase Bank, N.A. administers the award as
trustee of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
Trust.
The Gish Prize will be presented to Monk on the
evening of Thursday, October 26, 2017 at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which has been
the site of many of her notable performances.
The private ceremony, attended by leaders of the
arts community and her fellow artists, will
include remarks by Joseph
V. Melillo, Executive
Producer at BAM; Kristy
Edmunds, Executive
and Artistic Director of the Center for the Art
of Performance at the University of California,
Los Angeles and former Consulting Artistic
Director for the Park Avenue Armory in New York;
and trumpeter, santur player, vocalist and
composer Amir
ElSaffar, a
musician of a younger generation whose
boundary-crossing work shares similar
aspirations to Monk’s. Performances will feature
Meredith Monk joined by members of Meredith Monk
& Vocal Ensemble including Theo Bleckmann, Katie
Geissinger and Allison Sniffin to perform
"Choosing Companions" from her 1991 opera, ATLAS,
as well as selections from her newest
music-theater work in progress, Cellular
Songs, with Ms. Geissinger, Ms. Sniffin,
Ellen Fisher and Jo Stewart.Adam
Clark, Managing Director; Global Head of
Trust & Estates, J.P. Morgan Private Bank, will
also say a few words.
Meredith Monk said, “I am humbled and grateful
to receive the Gish Prize. It’s exceptional for
being a prize that a great artist decided to
give to other artists, and even more special for
the values that Lillian Gish expressed when she
said it should recognize contributions to ‘the
beauty of the world.’ I believe, as she did,
that art can be a healing force, a source of
light during dark times. With boundless
admiration for her, and profound respect for the
artists who received this prize before me, I am
thrilled to have been chosen for this
one-of-a-kind award.”
Hailed by The Times of London as “a
magician of the voice,” Meredith Monk has
previously received awards including the
National Medal of Arts, presented by President
Barack Obama; a MacArthur Foundation fellowship;
two Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
fellowships; three Obie awards; two Bessie
awards; the 2012 Composer of the Year award of Musical
America; an inaugural Doris Duke Artist
Award; and the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for
the Arts. She was appointed in 2014-15 to the
Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at
Carnegie Hall and in 2015 was installed as an
Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of the
Republic of France. She has received honorary
Doctor of Arts degrees from institutions
including The Juilliard School, the Boston
Conservatory, Mount Holyoke College, the San
Francisco Art Institute and Bard College. In
2010, NPR selected her for its special
international series 50 Great Voices,
naming its segment on her “Meredith Monk: A
Voice for All Time.”
Commenting on the decision to award Meredith
Monk the 2017 Gish Prize, Janet Sarbaugh, head
of the Prize selection committee said, "Meredith
Monk's work is a true gift to the world. Her
focus on the primacy of the human voice is
universal and feels both ancient and completely
modern. The immersive new worlds that she
creates provide a space for dreams, visions and
a balm for the human spirit in a fragmented and
contentious world. The expansiveness of her
creations and her seamless weaving together of
many art forms perfectly connect her to the
spirit of the Gish Prize. The Prize selection
committee is excited to announce her as this
year's winner."
The selection committee for 2017 comprised
Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum and Foundation; Mario Garcia
Durham, President and CEO of the Association of
Performing Arts Presenters (APAP); Amir ElSaffar,
trumpeter and composer; Joseph V. Melillo, Executive
Producer at BAM; and committee chair Janet L.
Sarbaugh, Vice President-Creativity and Senior
Program Director for the Arts & Culture Program
for the Heinz Endowments. Dr. Alberta Arthurs
serves as consultant to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
for the Gish Prize.
Speaking for
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Adam Clark stated,
“With the help of our esteemed selection
committee, we have continued to support Lillian
Gish’s vision of recognizing and celebrating
those artists who have made an indelible impact
through their work. In choosing Meredith Monk,
this year’s committee underscores the mission of
the Prize to recognize and encourage the power
of art to resonate on the deepest human level,
across all borders. We congratulate Meredith
Monk on receiving this high honor.”
Meredith Monk (b. 1942) was born in New York
City and attended Sarah Lawrence College. In
1968, she founded The House, a company dedicated
to an interdisciplinary approach to performance,
and in 1978 she founded Meredith Monk & Vocal
Ensemble to expand her musical textures and
forms. As a pioneer in site-specific
performance, she has created such works as Juice:
A Theatre Cantata In 3 Installments (1969)
and Ascension
Variations (2009) for the Guggenheim
Museum, and American
Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island (1994).
Her award-winning films, including Ellis
Island (1981) and her first
feature, Book
of Days (1988), have been seen
throughout the world, and her music is featured
in films by directors including Jean-Luc Godard,
Terrence Malick, David Byrne and the Coen
Brothers. Her new work Cellular Songs is
the latest in a series of music theater pieces
exploring humanity’s interdependent relationship
with the natural world, while seeking to evoke
the ineffable. Joined
by the women of her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble,
Monk combines some of her most adventurous and
daring vocal music to date with movement,
theatrical images, light, and film to create a
work that looks to underlying systems in nature
that can serve as a prototype for human behavior
in our tumultuous world.
About The
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
Established in 1994 through the will of Lillian
Gish, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize is
given annually to an individual who has “made an
outstanding contribution to the beauty of the
world and to mankind’s enjoyment and
understanding of life.” Past recipients are
Elizabeth LeCompte, Suzan-Lori Parks, Maya Lin,
Spike Lee, Anna Deavere Smith, Trisha Brown,
Chinua Achebe, Pete Seeger, Robert Redford,
Laurie Anderson, Shirin Neshat, Peter Sellars,
Ornette Coleman, Bill T. Jones, Lloyd Richards,
Jennifer Tipton, Merce Cunningham, Arthur
Miller, Isabel Allende, Bob Dylan, Robert
Wilson, Ingmar Bergman, and Frank Gehry. Prize
recipients are nominated by the arts community
and chosen by a distinguished committee of arts
leaders for their groundbreaking work in their
chosen fields. For further information,
visitwww.gishprize.com.
About
Dorothy and Lillian Gish
Dorothy and Lillian Gish followed their
mother onto the stage at an early age. The older
of the two sisters, Lillian took her first
theatrical curtain call in 1902 at the age of
eight in the play In Convict’s Stripes.
In 1912, the sisters’ childhood friend Mary
Pickford introduced them to D.W. Griffith, who
launched their film careers. Lillian would
become one of America’s best-loved actresses and
is considered by many the First Lady of the
Screen. In her 85-year career, she appeared in
more than 100 films—from Griffith’s An Unseen
Enemy (1912) to Lindsay Anderson’s The
Whales of August (1987)—and also took
numerous roles in television and on stage.
Dorothy Gish began her stage career at the age
of four and also went on to make more than 100
films, many of them with Lillian. Dorothy’s
early work in film highlighted her keen sense of
humor, bringing her acclaim as a star of comedy.
At the end of the silent era, she turned her
attention to the stage, where success in Young
Love brought her accolades with New York
audiences, on the road and subsequently in
London. In 1939 Dorothy and Lillian each played
Vinnie Day, wife of Clarence Day, Sr., in two
extensive American road company productions of Life
with Father. Dorothy returned to
film and television in the 1950s. Upon
her death in 1968, Dorothy Gish left the bulk of
her estate to the arts. Lillian Gish died in
1993 and also left the bulk of her estate to the
arts, including a trust for the formation of the
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
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