“We are delighted to celebrate the Herb Alpert Award’s 23rd anniversary,” says Rona Sebastian, President of the Herb Alpert Foundation. “Each year the Award recognizes five visionary mid-career artists who expand their fields as well as our horizons. We believe that championing the arts, individual artists, and arts education – from early childhood through professional development – has profound social, cultural, and personal impact. This is at the core of the Foundation’s interests.”
“It’s particularly meaningful at this divisive moment to honor and support this year’s winners who are rigorous in their reach, alert to the world, and make community as much as they make art,“ says Irene Borger, Director of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. She describes why they were chosen by the 2017 panelists:
“The Dance panel was thrilled to select choreographer luciana achugar, for her exciting, anarchic artistry, her big vision, her capacity to visualize and enact pleasure and beauty in the transcendent body, unflinching willingness to look at socio-political concerns and how they impact individuals, and no less than the creation of pagan experiences and ‘new rituals.’”
DANCE Panelists: Olga Garay-English, Ralph Lemon, Carla Peterson
“The Film/Video panel honors artist Kerry Tribe, for her fearlessness in rethinking and readdressing social issues, her ability to make surprising and moving connections, for her demanding, pleasurable, transformative, and accessible work. They value her empathetic, generous and rare ability to immerse her audiences in new ways of seeing the world.”
FILM/VIDEO Panelists: Erin Christovale, Stephen Gong, Leslie Thornton
“Composer Eve Beglarian was chosen as the winner in Music for her prolific, engaging, and surprising body of work, her deep engagement with different communities, her dedication to continuing to make experimental work outside the canon, and her risk taking in both music and life with no separation between these spheres.”
MUSIC Panelists: John King, Tania León, Nicole Mitchell
“Director Daniel Fish was selected by the Theatre panel for his mesmerizing, bold complex imagination, his steadfast commitment to the art of possibility, the ways he unceasingly questions what theatre might be, his amplification of ideas through his independent artistic explorations, and for his dedication to widening the forms for performance, enlarging ones experience in American theatre.”
THEATRE Panelists: Kristy Edmunds, Tom Sellar, Meiyin Wang
“Artist Amy Franceschini was named the Visual Arts prize winner for her brave, ethical important cross-disciplinary work that grapples with critical issues of human survival, for her prescient intergenerational and transnational vision, her theoretical and conceptual reach and real-world applications, and for her engaged and collaborative citizenship.”
VISUAL ARTS Panelists: Emily Jacir, Joan Simon, Claire Tancons
Short film on the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts
Herb Alpert Foundation media requests, contact:
Caroline Graham, C4 Global Communications
caroline@c4global.com | 310 899 2727 | www.c4global.com