Gotham Chamber Opera and the Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation have announced David Hertzberg as the inaugural winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Music.
The newly founded Catherine Doctorow Prize for Music is an award of $15,000 to a composer for the creation of a new concert work for solo voice and chamber ensemble of between 3 to 10 acoustic instruments at 15 to 30 minutes in length.
Mr. Hertzberg is deserving of the reward because the prize jury found his music to be "an extraordinarily beautiful sound world with a unique and distinguishing vocabulary," with "deeply affecting emotional content.” The jury adds that Mr. Hertzberg has the potential to revamp the world of concert repertoire for voice.
The prize jury consisted of seven members, including conductor Yves Abel, executive director of Gotham Chamber Orchestra David Bennett, bassist and principal artist for the Metropolitan Opera Kevin Burdette, conductor for Founding Artistic Director and Gotham Chamber Opera Neal Goren, soprano for New York City Opera, Nancy Allen Lundy, principal flutist for Gotham Chamber Opera Sato Moughalian and artistic director for Alarm Will Sound, Alan Pierson.
In addition to winning Catherine Doctorow Prize for Music, Hertzberg's work will premiere in a concert presented by Gotham Chamber Opera, with additional funding for the premiere provided by the Hegardt Foundation.
24-year-old Hertzberg is already quite accomplished for his age, possessing a BA and MA of Music from the Juilliard School, has studied at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the Freie Universität, Berlin, the Aspen Music Festival and completed a fellowship at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris and The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala--to name just a few of his accomplishments. Currently, he is pursuing an Artist Diploma at The Curtis Institute of Music.
Below, via Hertzberg’s SoundCloud account, you can hear his stunning “Nympharum,” a cantata for high soprano and orchestra after Ezra Pound.
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