Alex Mincek Wins 2013 Alpert Award in the Arts

Alex Mincek
Photo courtesy Alpert Awards

New York City-based composer/saxophonist Alex Mincek was among the six mid-career artists honored on May 10, 2013, by the Herb Alpert Foundation and the California Institute of the Arts with a 19th annual Alpert Award in the Arts. The award, a prize of $75,000, recognizes past performance and future promise of artists working in dance, film/video, music, theater, and visual arts.

Herb Alpert, the musician and recording impresario who created the Herb Alpert Foundation with his wife Lani Hall and gave the first Alpert Award in the Arts in 1995, said: “All of this year’s winners represent the essence of the Alpert Award. They take aesthetic, intellectual and political risks, and challenge worn-out conventions. They’re unafraid of the unknown.”

Irene Borger, director of the Alpert Award in the Arts, further elaborated on why Mincek was chosen: “Composer and saxophonist Alex Mincek was honored with the Music Award for creating a sound world at once original and informed, for his searching spirit combined with solid accomplishment, and, with his fresh and diverse mix of influences, creating a musical space relevant to the moment.”

The other 2013 winners are Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, directors of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based anthropologist and filmmaker Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Chicago-based dancer/choreographer Julia Rhoads, and New York City-based installation artist Sharon Hayes. Previous Music Award winners include Mark Feldman, Cynthia Hopkins, John King, Lukas Ligeti, Zhou Long, Myra Melford, and Nicole Mitchell.

(—from the press release)