MCANA Award for Best New Opera is Announced

The Music Critics Association of North America
bestows its Third Annual Award for
BEST NEW OPERA
to

composer ELLEN REID | librettist ROXIE PERKINS
for
p r i s m

Watch the trailer for the opera here.

AWARDS COMMITTEE:
Heidi Waleson, co-chair
George Loomis, co-chair
Arthur Kaptainis
John Rockwell
Alex Ross

Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins to be honored at July 26 Award Ceremony
during the MCANA Annual Meeting at Tanglewood

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Despite shrinking coverage of classical music in traditional print media,
MCANA endeavors to support the classical music community in North America
by recognizing excellence in the contemporary music arena.

From the MCANA Committee:
"p r i s m is a gripping, probing work about a fraught mother-daughter relationship and the loss of an artificial, protected realm. Ellen Reid’s arresting music, broad in its stylistic range and rich in its solo vocal, choral and orchestral palette, vividly matches and intensifies the opera’s mysterious, psychologically charged dramatic essence. We at MCANA are thrilled to honor Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins with the 2019 Best New Opera Award." 

Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) is pleased to announce that its 3rd Annual Award for Best New Opera has been given to composer and sound artist Ellen Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins for p r i s m — “a riveting new opera” (I Care If You Listen) with "an enchanting libretto" (The Log) that "treads a fine line between poetic abstraction and gut-wrenching reality” (San Francisco Classical Voice).

The MCANA Award for Best New Opera is a major recognition given annually by an Awards Committee of distinguished music critics. Honoring an opera premiered in either the United States or Canada, it is the only award for “Best New Opera” in the U.S., and one of the few in the world that simultaneously recognizes both the composer and librettist. 

p r i s m received its premiere as part of Los Angeles Opera's Off Grand series on November 29, 2018, commissioned and co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects. The opera, which addresses the psychological effects of surviving sexual assault, is a haunting, kaleidoscopic work of opera-theatre that traverses the elasticity of memory after trauma. Ellen Reid’s music uses choral and orchestral manipulation to deliver an eerily distinct sonic world. This past April, Reid won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for p r i s m. 

After soliciting nominations from MCANA members, the finalists were chosen by an Awards Committee co-chaired by Heidi Waleson, opera critic of The Wall Street Journal, and George Loomis, longtime contributor to the Financial Times and Musical America—alongside committee members Arthur Kaptainis, who writes for the Montreal Gazette and Ludwig van Toronto; John Rockwell, former critic and arts editor of The New York Times and co-New York correspondent of Opera (UK); and Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker. 

Finalists and runners up to p r i s m are An American Soldier by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang; and Proving Up by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.

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In response to winning the award, Ellen Reid said: “We are overjoyed to be receiving this year’s MCANA Award! It means so much to have this work resonate with a large audience at this divisive time. Thank you to all of the artists who put their life into this work, Beth Morrison, LA Opera and everyone who championed its existence in the world.”

Roxie Perkins said: "Thank you so much to MCANA for this incredible award. This opera would not have been possible without the tireless, brave leadership of Beth Morrison Projects, our director James Darrah, and the rest of our collaborators who gave so much of themselves to this show. It was a risk and challenge to make p r i s m, and we are all so grateful to the critics who championed the piece." 

The Award will be presented to composer and librettist on Friday, July 26, 2019 at the opening reception of the MCANA Annual Meeting, which this year is held at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshires.

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The MCANA Award for Best New Opera was created in 2016 to honor musical and theatrical excellence in a fully-staged opera that received its world premiere in North America during the preceding calendar year. It reflects the overarching mission of MCANA to foster excellence and, through its web publication Classical Voice North America, to communicate the richness of musical life in the U.S. and Canada at a time when classical music coverage in traditional print media is shrinking. 

The inaugural Award went to Breaking the Waves in 2017, composed by Missy Mazzoli with libretto by Royce Vavrek; the 2nd annual award was bestowed to composer/librettist David Hertzberg for The Wake World in 2018.

MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA
mcana.org

MCANA is the only North American organization for professional classical music critics. The association was incorporated in 1957, and early members included leading critics such as Miles Kastendieck of the New York Herald Tribune, Harold C. Schonberg of the New York Times, Paul Hume of the Washington Post, and Irving Lowens of the Washington Star. Current members include critics at the New Yorker, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Toronto Star; regular contributors to the Financial Times, Gramophone, Los Angeles Times, Ludwig van Toronto, Montreal Gazette, Musicalamerica.com, O pera, Opera News, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Wall Street Journal; and program annotators and broadcast journalists. The organization is a member of the National Music Council. In 2013, MCANA launched Classical Voice North America, a web publication for reviews, features, and commentary with readers in 120 countries.

ELLEN REID
ellenreidmusic.com

Ellen Reid is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. A composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, ensemble and choral writing, she recently became the first composer to have works premiered by Los Angeles’ four leading musical institutions — the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Los Angeles Master Chorale — all within one year.

Ellen Reid was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera, p r i s m, which addresses the psychological effects of surviving sexual assault. Other season highlights include a new work for the New York Philharmonic, and a collaboration with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller on a sound installation for the LA Phil’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. In the fall of 2019, Ellen begins a three-year appointment as Creative Advisor and Composer-in-Residence for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

With composer Missy Mazzoli, Ellen Reid is co-founder of Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young self-identified female, non-binary, and gender non-conforming composers. She received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts. Ellen splits her time between her two favorite cities — Los Angeles and New York.

ROXIE PERKINS
roxieperkins.com

Roxie Perkins is an artist who writes and directs for opera, theatre, TV, and film. She is the librettist of the Pulitzer Prize winning opera p r i s m which premiered at LA Opera/REDCAT and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club as part of PROTOTYPE's Opera Theatre Festival. She was awarded a Sundance Playwright Fellowship, and was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Theatre Conference as well as the Princess Grace Award. Her work has been nominated to The Kilroy's "THE LIST" and We For She’s “WriteHer List,” annual rankings of the best unproduced plays and original TV pilots by women.  She directed “Green Umbrella: Theatre of the Outrageous,” a program of three short operas performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her plays have appeared at The Tank NYC, The LARK’s Roundtable Reading Series, Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre, Oberlin College, UCLA's MFA New Play Festival, On The Verge Summer Repertory Theater, and HERE Arts Center as part of Downtown Urban Theater Festival. Roxie has worked as a Visiting Lecturer at UCLA's School of Theatre, Film, and Television, a Teaching Artist at Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre, and a Visiting Artist at California State Summer School for the Arts at CalArts. A new play of hers will premiere at Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco in January 2020 and an upcoming Netflix television show that she wrote on will premiere in 2021.

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