Composer Steve Reich is the winner of the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category. The jury citation describes how the American composer has developed "a new concept of music, based on the use of realist elements from the realm of daily life and others drawn from the traditional music of Africa and Asia." The jury notes: "Steve Reich has carved out new paths, fostering a dialogue between popular and high culture and between western modernity and non-European traditions, and achieving a rich combination of complexity and transparency.”
Compser Steve Reich is the winner of the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category. The jury citation describes how the American composer has developed "a new concept of music, based on the use of realist elements from the realm of daily life and others drawn from the traditional music of Africa and Asia." Previous recipients of the award include Pierre Boulez, Salvatore Sciarrino, Helmut Lachenmann, and Cristóbal Halffter.
"Steve Reich has carved out new paths," the jury notes, "fostering a dialogue between popular and high culture and between western modernity and non-European traditions, and achieving a rich combination of complexity and transparency.” The jury also singles out Reich's ability to attract the widest, most varied audiences “by engaging frontally with world issues, from the Israeli-Palestine conflict to the 9/11 attacks, as well as contemporary problems like the relations between faith and science and technology.”
Steve Reich has just finished writing a quartet for two vibraphones and two pianos with first performances by the Colin Currie Group this autumn, and is working on a new piece for the Royal Ballet in London and the Signal Ensemble in Chicago for premiere in 2016.
The BBVA Foundation, based in Madrid, promotes, funds, and disseminates scientific research and artistic creation, in the conviction that science, culture and knowledge in its broadest sense hold the key to a better future for people. The Foundation designs and implements its programs in partnership with leading scientific and cultural organizations in Spain and abroad, seeking to identify and prioritize those projects with the power to move forward the frontiers of the known world.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, established in 2008, recognizes achievement in eight categories, including classical areas like Basic Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) and Biomedicine, and other, more recent areas, ranging from Information and Communication Technologies, Ecology and Conservation Biology, Climate Change and Economics, Finance and Management to Development Cooperation and the innovative realm of artistic creation that is Contemporary Music.
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