News to start your week!

Congratulations are due to Jennifer Higdon who was awarded the Michael Ludwig Hemmers Prize in Music Composition.  The prize is given to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement “who have significantly influenced the field of composition.”  The Philadelphia Inquirer has more.

It has been wonderful to see so much attention paid to the life and work of Florence Price in recent months and weeks.  This week it was announced that Price was posthumously inducted into the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association – and organization she was denied admittance to during her lifetime because of her race.  Read more in the Arkansas Times.

The Annapolis Symphony Academy is preparing to launch this fall – and promises to ensure that half of the student body is representative of African-American or Hispanic-Latino communities.  Read about this bold initiative here.

A bit delayed – but make sure to read the New York Times article about Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s newest work premiered by the New York Philharmonic.  See a video of a rehearsal below: