Classical Recording Foundation Honors 2012 Award Winners at Carnegie Hall, 11/20

The Classical Recording Foundation (CRF) has announced the 2012 winners of its eleventh annual Classical Recording Foundation Awards.

Four prizes will be presented at the Foundation’s Annual Awards Concert and Benefit at 7:30pm on Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. The event, for which the public may purchase tickets, will feature CRF Young Artist of the Year harpist Bridget Kibbey performing music by Paquito D’Rivera, Kinan Azmeh, and David Bruce; soprano Elizabeth Futral and pianist Margo Garrett in selections from CRF Composer of the Year Philip Lasser's Les Visages de L’Amour from his album Colors of Feelings (Delos; October 30); Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award winners Barbara Govatos and Marcantonio Barone in selections from their new recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano (Bridge; December 2012); and Classical Recording Foundation Award winner harpsichordist Gerald Ranck performing selections from J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Cantilena, forthcoming). The proceeds from the 2012 Classical Recording Foundation Award Ceremony and Benefit will go toward the 2013 Awards.

The Classical Recording Foundation (CRF) was formed to address the growing needs of classical musicians who have found it increasingly difficult to recording their musical visions. The Foundation applies the universal model of philanthropically supported live concerts to the recording of new classical performances. Since 2002, when it was founded by Grammy Award winning producer Adam Abeshouse, CRF has supported more than 40 new recordings. Criteria for Classical Recording Foundation Awards include artistic merit of the project, historic significance, strategic value to the artist’s career, and breadth of interest. CRF encourages artists to release performances of their choosing, of music about which they are passionate.

CRF’s Young Artist of the Year harpist Bridget Kibbey is being honored for her forthcoming album, Music Box. Music Box features virtuosic pieces for solo harp that celebrate the cultural fabric which shapes the U.S., as well as Kibbey’s compelling, communicative power and diversity as an artist. The album, which also includes a guest appearance by soprano Dawn Upshaw, re-defines the role of the harp as each international composer uses the instrument to dialogue about his/her cultural inspiration and move to America. Lauded for her artistry and ability to captivate audiences, harpist Bridget Kibbey “makes it seem as thought her instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the gorgeous colors and energetic figures she was getting from it” (The New York Times). She is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, a winner of Concert Artist Guild's International Competition and Astral Artist Auditions, and a former member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS II. Bridget's debut album, Love is Come Again, was named one of 2007's Top Ten Releases by Time Out New York. She can also be heard on Deutsche Grammaphon with Dawn Upshaw, on a recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre and Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs. Kibbey's solo performances have been broadcast on NPR's Performance Today, on New York's WQXR, WNYC's Soundcheck, WETA’s Front Row Washington, WRTI’s Crossover, and A&E's Breakfast with the Arts.

CRF Composer of the Year Philip Lasser is being honored for his forthcoming release on Delos, Colors of Feelings, due at retail on October 30. Colors of Feelings includes three new vocal works performed by sopranos Elizabeth Futral and Susanna Phillips (CRF Young Artist of the Year 2011) that span across continents and epochs. On November 20, Futral and pianist Margo Garrett will perform selections from Les Visages de L’Amour, a song cycle comprising six varied love poems from important French poets such as Gérard Nerval, Paul Verlaine. Philip Lasser’s musical and personal background are colored by both the French and American cultures. His musical career began as a teenager at Nadia Boulanger’s Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainbleau, where he studied with pianist Gaby Casadesus. After graduating from Harvard College, Lasser studied in Paris with Boulanger’s colleague Narcis Bonet. His music is heard frequently in a myriad of settings, from Simone Dinnerstein’s (CRF Awards 2006 and 2007) The Berlin Concert album on which she performs his Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach, to concerts by the Seattle Symphony and New York Chamber Symphony, as well as on CDs from New World Records and Crystal Records. He has also recently published a book, The Spiraling Tapestry: An Inquiry into the Contrapuntal Fabric of Music, which offers a pioneering view on Bach's compositional world.

CRF Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists violinist Barbara Govatos and pianist Marcantonio Barone are being honored for their forthcoming recording of all of Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano, to be released in December on Bridge Records. Barbara Govatos and Marcantonio Barone first encountered one another when, as teenagers, they won prizes in different divisions of the same concerto competition in Philadelphia. Their acquaintance was renewed by chance several years later when he delivered a message to her by telephone on behalf of a mutual friend, and they have performed chamber music concerts and sonata recitals together regularly since 1985. As a duo, they made their New York recital debut in 2000, performing the complete works for violin and piano by Brahms at Weill Recital Hall. Barbara Govatos holds the Wilson H. and Barbara B. Taylor chair of the first violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra and was named the winner of the 2012 C. Hartman Kuhn Award for enhancing the standards and the reputation of the Fabulous Philadelphians. As a chamber musician, Govatos has collaborated with Emmanuel Ax, Radu Lupu, Riccardo Muti, Christopher Parkening, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and the Emerson String Quartet. She made her solo debut in Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra and has made appearances with the Dallas and Delaware Symphonies and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Marcantonio Barone was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1962. He studied with Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute of Music and with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. As a solo recitalist, Barone has performed for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and at the Metropolitan Musem in New York, the Wigmore Hall in London, and the Large Hall of the St. Petersburg Filarmoniya, among many other venues. In the 1980s and ’90s, he frequently performed as soloist with major orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he performs annually at the Delaware Chamber Music Festival, and as a member of the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, the mixed ensemble 1807 and Friends, and the Craftsbury Chamber Players. He has premiered solo piano works by David Finko, Ulysses Kay, Gerald Levinson, Philip Maneval, and George Rochberg. As a member of Orchestra 2001, he was the pianist for the first performances of all seven volumes of George Crumb’s monumental American Songbook and for the recordings of the volumes issued so far in Bridge Records’ George Crumb Edition.

CRF Award winner Gerald Ranck, harpsichordist, is being honored for his recording of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach, planned for eventual release on Cantilena Records as a 4-CD set. Ranck is making his new recording on three different instruments – harpsichord, fortepiano, and chamber organ – all of which were known to Bach. Ranck has given each prelude and fugue an assigned instrumentation based on its inherent musical style, and his own personal preference. Gerald Ranck was born in Pennsylvania and began piano studies at age six. He was a scholarship student of Jose Echaniz at the Eastman School of Music, before coming to New York City in 1961 to study the harpsichord with Sylvia Marlowe at the Mannes College. His New York debut was in 1967. In 1976 he gave the first performance on harpsichord of Bach's Art of Fugue, the same year in which he became the first ever harpsichord soloist to appear in Teheran. He has appeared to great acclaim in London's Wigmore Hall and at the Drottningholm Court Theater in Sweden. He has recorded for Soundspells (Bach flute sonatas with Samuel Baron), Cantilena (numerous CDs with Laurel Zucker), and Decca (with Andreas Scholl and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra). He is a founding member of the Strathmere Ensemble, and is a frequent guest soloist with the Orchestra of St Lukes, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble (complete Brandenburg Concerti with James Levine). He is the music director of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a position held since 1984.