Musical America Announces 2024 Artists of the Year

Musical America has announced its annual awards, with Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen named Artist of the Year and heading a distinguished group of artists, collectively described by one seasoned industry observer as “the best lineup yet.” The awards date to 1961, when Leonard Bernstein was named Musician of the Year.

Since winning Operalia in 2015, Artist of the Year Lise Davidsen has sung leading roles at all of the major international houses, from the Met to La Scala to the Vienna Staatsoper, earning accolades for her vocal and theatrical instincts everywhere she appears. She is a phenomenon. One critic described her as “a one-in-a-million voice,” another as simply, “the voice of a lifetime.”

Composer of the Year Kevin Puts holds the distinction of being the only living composer to have the same opera on the Met stage for two consecutive seasons. The Hours, which evolved from his longtime collaboration with Renee Fleming, ran to packed houses in 2023 and will undoubtedly do so again when it returns in the spring. Puts’s first opera Silent Night won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and his concerto Contact, recorded by Time for Three, received the 2023 Grammy award for Best Contemporary Composition.

Conductor of the Year Sir Antonio Pappano, now in his record-setting 21^st year as music director of London’s Royal Opera House, will soon trade one immense artistic mantle for another, when he becomes chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra next season. But even as he remains in the top echelon of distinguished maestros, his motto remains, “You’re only as good as your last concert.”

Instrumentalist of the Year Anthony McGill seems to spend as much time as a clarinet soloist on international stages as he does in the principal chair of the New York Philharmonic. As the occupant of a key position in a major American orchestra, he has just two predecessors as MA’s Instrumentalist of the Year, both of them legends of the industry:  Adolph ("Bud") Herseth, in 1996, when he was principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and, in 1998, Stanley Drucker, then principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic. McGill is a dedicated teacher and works to promote the arts as a means to building community.

Ensemble of the Year The Crossing, under the direction of Donald Nally, is a vocal ensemble of the now. Specializing in new music, and delivering it with pinpoint accuracy, the 24-voiced group’s goal is to build a new canon of choral music, using American English, that tells today’s stories. To that end, it has about 180 commissions to its credit, ranging from Edie Hill’s Spectral Spirits, a cantata about extinct birds, the recording of which earned a Grammy award in 2023, to Ted Hearne’s Farming, described by Nally as, “an hourlong, crazy romp through the topic of land ownership; basically, a dialogue between Jeff Bezos and William Penn.”

In announcing the 2024 Award recipients, Musical America Publisher Stephanie Challener said, “Each of these remarkable talents have, in his or her unique way, brought entirely new perspectives and vistas to the performing arts. It is our honor to recognize these great artists and their contributions.”