Fellows Friday News: Jennifer Higdon Wins International Opera Award, Geoff Sobelle at New York Theatre Workshop, and More

In this month's Pew Fellows news highlights, Jennifer Higdon wins a prestigious International Opera Award for Cold Mountain, Geoff Sobelle's one-man play The Object Lesson will be presented at New York Theatre Workshop, and a mid-career retrospective book of Bo Bartlett's paintings is published.

Honors and Awards

Theater artist Thaddeus Phillips (2002) received a 2016 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a multi-year $275,000 grant awarded to 21 artists for "their creative vitality and ongoing contributions to the fields of dance, jazz, and theater." Read more>>

Composer Jennifer Higdon's (1999) opera Cold Mountain, which received its East Coast premiere with co-commissioner Opera Philadelphia in February 2015, won an International Opera Award for "Best World Premiere." Read more>>

Choreographer Raphael Xavier (2013) received a touring grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts to present his work at The Yard (Chilmark, MA), Autorino Center for the Arts and Humanities (West Hartford, CT), and World Music/CRASHarts (Cambridge, MA). Read more>>

On Stage, On View, and In Print

Theater artist Geoff Sobelle's (2006) The Object Lesson, an absurdist one-man play that explores our relationship to "things," will be presented in New York Theatre Workshop's 2016-17 season. Read more>>

Scala Arts Publishers, Inc. has released a mid-career retrospective book of visual artist Bo Bartlett's (1993) work—the first full-length publication to document Bartlett's evolution as an artist. Read more>>

Liberian vocalist Fatu Gayflor (2014) performed with Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars to commemorate the Philadelphia Museum of Art's new exhibition Creative Africa. Read more>>

Visual artist Alex Da Corte (2012) created a large-scale inflatable installation in the shape of an infant that flew above the 2016 Frieze New York art fair. W Magazine wrote of the work, "it's the type of naughtiness that makes it obvious why Da Corte has been called the heir to Pop art." Read more>>

In Review

Visual artist Jane Irish's (2011) exhibition, A Rapid Whirling on the Heel, currently on view at Locks Gallery, was reviewed in Hyperallergic and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In its review, Hyperallergic wrote that Irish's work "insists that art can be simultaneously beautiful and political." Read more>>

Writer Beth Kephart's (2005) recently published young adult novel, This is the Story of You, was featured in the May issue of The Writer, and an excerpt of the book was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Read more>>

Rolling Stone reviewed musician Chris Forsyth's (2011) latest album, stating "Forsyth and the Solar Motel Band pack 'The Rarity of Experience' with great spirits, then deliver on every expectation." Read more>>