The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and David Lang won the music prize for “The Little Match Girl Passion.” I haven’t heard the piece, but David is a reliably excellent composer–one of my favorite performances of the past year was ICE’s performance of his piece “Men” at the end of the Bang On a Can Marathon. Runners up were “Meanwhile” by Stephen Hartke and “Concerto for Viola” by Roberto Sierra.
Unfortunately, the winner in the Feature Writing category was Gene Weingarten’s piece “Pearls Before Breakfast.” You’ll recall that this was the experiment with Joshua Bell playing in the DC Metro. I shamelessly and self-servinlgy refer you back to my own analysis “Why the Joshua Bell Experiment Tells Us Nothing.”
Got to give Weingarten credit for pulling a PT Barnum and getting a world class musician to trot himself out as a side show geek for one of the all time half-witted experiments. Certainly caused a minor stir for a week or two…
As Steve Smith over at the Time Out NY blog reports, no excuse for not hearing Lang’s winner — it’s up for streaming on the Carnegie Hall website.
Obviously, the committee completely ignored your insights, Galen… sigh… 😉