34th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award Winners Honored

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers has announced the 34th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for outstanding print, broadcast, and news media coverage of music. ASCAP President and Chairman Marilyn Bergman, who presided over the awards ceremony held at Lincoln Center in early December, noted that in the award’s history, tens of thousands of dollars have been distributed in cash prizes to honor the writers and broadcasters who “enrich and educate us about music.”

Highlights of the two-hour awards ceremony included live performances by Livingston Taylor, Richard Miller, and Rob Schwimmer (who held the audience transfixed during a performance of Waltz for Clara on theremin, a work dedicated to virtuoso Clara Rockmore). The President’s Award for outstanding achievement went to Jazz, the ten-part documentary by Ken Burns. When presenting the award, Bergman reminded the audience of the genre’s importance to the nation as “our own homegrown classical music.” Accepting the Radio Broadcast Award for his program Pipedreams, Michael Barone took a moment to advocate for a proper pipe organ at Lincoln Center. Composer William Duckworth accepted an Internet Award for his Cathedral Project site. He noted that artists have already begun to embrace the Web as an artistic medium and that the Internet has “provided a home for new and experimental music” and “reawakened an interest in the process of making music.” The evening concluded with a clip of Neil Young‘s performance of “Imagine” from the Television Broadcast Award-winner, the “America: A Tribute to Heroes” television special, which aired as a joint and commercial-free production by the ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC Networks in the wake of the September 11 tragedies.

The complete list of winners includes:

Among the honorees Albert Glinsky (r) was presented with his award for Theremin : Ether Music and Espionage by panelist and ASCAP composer Paul Moravec. Photo by Steve Bamberg

Awards to books authors and publishers:

• Whitney Balliett for Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000, by St. Martin’s Press
• David Cairns for Berlioz: The Making of An Artist, 1803-1832, by University of California Press
• Eric Chafe for Analyzing Bach Cantatas, by Oxford University Press
• Benjamin Filene for Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music, by University of North Carolina Press
• Albert Glinsky for Theremin: Ether Music & Espionage, by University of Illinois Press
• Constance Valis Hill for Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers, by Oxford University Press
• Michael Tenzer for Gamelan Gong Kebyar, by University of Chicago Press
• Andrew Ward for Dark Midnight When I Rise, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Awards to writers and editors of journal, magazine, and newspaper articles; program notes and/or liner notes and their respective publishers:

• J. Peter Burkholder for his article “Twentieth Century and the Orchestra as Museum,” published by Watson-Guptill Publications
• Robert Christgau for his article “Let’s Get Busy in Hawaiian,” published by The Village Voice
• Robert Gordon for his article “Northern Light,” published by Oxford American
• Kim H. Kowalke for his article “I’m an American!,:Whitman, Weill, and Cultural Identity,” published by Garland Press
• Sean Mitchell for his article “Dave Alvin’s Reality Road,” published by The Los Angeles Times Magazine
• Robert G. O’Meally for his liner notes “Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings,” issued by Sony Music Entertainment
• Gayle Murchison for her essay “Dean of Afro-American Composers” or “Harlem Renaissance Man,” published by University of California Press
• Neil Tesser for his liner notes “Coltrane Jazz & Coltrane Plays the Blues,” issued by Rhino Records
• Robert W. Wason for his liner notes “Alec Wilder and American Song,” issued by Albany Records

ASCAP Deems Taylor Special Recognition Awards:

• Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball for Reading Lyrics, published by Pantheon Books
• Bill Holland for his series, “Work For Hire,” published by Billboard Magazine
• Richard Meltzer for A Whore Just Like the Rest, published by Da Capo Press
• Carol Oja for Making Music Modern, published by Oxford U
  niversity Press
• Joel Selvin for his liner notes to the reissues of two Creedence Clearwater Revival albums Pendulum and Bayou Country, issued by Fantasy, Inc.
• Mark Slobin for Fiddler on the Move, published by Oxford University Press
• Livingston Taylor for Stage Performance, published by Pocket Books

• Radio Broadcast Award—Pipedreams, program host and producer Michael Barone and Minnesota Public Radio
• Television Broadcast Award—America: A Tribute to Heroes, the all-star benefit program produced by the ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC Networks together with supervising producer Joel Gallen
• Internet Awards—Cathedral and William Duckworth for monroestreet.com/Cathedral; Experience Music Project and designer Diane Andolsek for emplive.com.

Deems Taylor, in whose honor the awards program was named, served as ASCAP President from 1942 to 1948 and as a member of the ASCAP Board of Directors from 1933 to 1966. He was a highly regarded composer, distinguished music critic, journalist, commentator and broadcast personality. He lent his recognizable voice to Disney as the narrator of the original Fantasia, and served as the commentator for radio broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera.