"Arts are essential to our wellbeing," Rona Sebastian, President of the Herb Alpert Foundation said Wednesday May 3, 2023, in a ceremony on zoom on the occasion of the 29th Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts (HAAIA), adding that the last few years have shown just "how resilient artists are."
Irene Borger, who has been Director of the Alpert Awards in the Arts since its inception in 1994, commented that "It seems more critical now to offer a fierce and forward-looking imagination to the world – which is precisely what all of the 2023 Herb Alpert Award Artists do."
Clockwise from L to R: Lani Hall Alpert, Herb Alpert, CalArts President Ravi Rajan, Herb Alpert ... [+]
The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts bestows an unrestricted $75,000 award to mid-career artists in five disciplines: Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theater, Visual Arts.
In past years, the Herb Alpert Foundation made one award in each category. However, since the pandemic they have doubled it, awarding two in each category. And this year, because one of the recipients in one category are a team, a total of eleven artists were honored this year.
2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts grantees.
This year's grantees are: Christopher Harris, Madeline Hunt Ehrlich in Film/Video; Erin Gee, May Hahn Oh in Music; Tania El Khoury. Whitney White in Theater; Ayodele Casel, Makini (jumatatu m. poe) & Jermone Donte Beacham in Dance; and American Artist, and Park McArthur in Visual Arts.
The awards are given by a panel of artists in each discipline, many of whom are former Alpert Award grantees.
This year's film/video panelists were: Dessane Lopez Cassell, writer and curator; Editor-in-Chief, Seen journal (BlackStar Projects), Brooklyn, NY; Bill Morrison, filmmaker, HAAIA Awardee, New York, NY; Richard Peña, Professor of Professional Practice (Film), Columbia University and Director Emeritus of the New York Film Festival, New York, NY.
The music panelists were: Derek Bermel, composer, clarinetist, HAAIA Awardee, Brooklyn, NY; Nicole Mitchell, composer/improv, HAAIA Awardee, Henderson, NC; Pamela Z, composer/performer, HAAIA Awardee, San Francisco, CA.
The theater panelists were: Emilya Cachapero, Director of Grantmaking Programs, Theatre Communications Group and arts consultant, New York, NY; Avery Willis Hoffman, artistic director, Brown Arts Institute and Professor of the Practice, Brown University, Providence, RI; Gideon Lester, artistic director and chief executive, Fisher Center, Bard College and senior curator, Open Society University Network’s Center for the Arts and Human Rights, Annandale-on-Hudson and Brooklyn, NY.
This year's Dance panelists were :Carla Peterson, director, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL.; Ali Rosa-Salas, curator, Vice President of Visual and Performing Arts, Abron Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY; Associate Curator, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, MA; and Eva Yaa Asantewaa, veteran independent arts writer, podcaster, editor, curator, dramaturge; founding Director of Black Diaspora, New York, NY.
The visual arts panelists were: Nana Adusei Poku, scholar, curator, Asst. Prof in African Diasporic Art History, Dept of History of Art, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Jessica Hong, curator and cultural worker; Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Joan Simon, independent curator, writer, arts administrator, Santa Monica, CA.
Herb Alpert and Lani Hall were on the zoom. Alpert is 88 and still performs with Hall – In May alone they are performing to sold out audiences in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, before appearing in London at Ronnie Scott’s (May 29th - June 3rd).
Alpert has led a remarkable life having found great success as a performer, band leader, recording artist, as a producer and record label owner, as a businessman, as a painter and a sculptor and as a philanthropist.
Let me focus a moment on the last of these: Alpert is one of America's most loyal and generous supporters of arts education and of artists. His philanthropy has supported the establishment of several elementary and high schools, and high school music programs. UCLA's Music School bears his name, and Los Angeles Community College's Music majors attend tuition free thanks to him, and the Herb Alpert Foundation is supporting this season of the Pacific Jazz Orchestra.
Short film on the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
More to the point, for three decades, Herb and Lani Hall Alpert, have given life-changing, career sustaining grants to a coterie of artists who have gone to great acclaim and accomplishment, including Carrie Mae Weems. Taylor Mac, Suzan-Lori Parks, Julia Wolfe, Michelle Dorrance, Tania Brugera, Kerry James Marshall, Lisa Kron, Sharon Lockhart, Ralph Lemon, Arthur Jafa, Cai Guo-Qiang, Daniel Fish, Michael Rakowitz. Over the last thirty years, they have awarded more than $200 Million dollars.
Speaking to the grantees, Alpert recounted how as an 8-year-old child he chose the trumpet in a music class; and how once he could make that trumpet make sound, he found the vessel that launched him on his life's voyage – in which he learned that the artist is the instrument not the trumpet. "You are the instrument," he told the zoom attendees.
I'll leave the last work to Rona Sebastian who said, "Herb and Lani Alpert continue their decades-long commitment to support those art makers and performing artists who. In grappling with our challenging world are creating innovative, vital, and necessary work."
