2013 Meadows Prize winners to present public events
at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, April 10-14

Violist Nadia Sirota and interdisciplinary artist Tania Bruguera, winners of the 2013 Meadows Prize at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, will conduct the first half of their residencies at SMU in April and will present several public events the week of April 8.

The prize includes housing for a one-month residency in Dallas, along with expenses and a $25,000 stipend. In return, recipients are expected to interact in a substantive way with Meadows students and collaborating arts organizations, and to leave a lasting legacy in Dallas.

Nadia Sirota

Nadia Sirota will conduct the first half of her residency April 1-14 and return October 7-19. In addition to giving master classes and serving as a guest lecturer for various courses, she will participate in three concerts in April:

Events open to the public:

April 11: yMusic in the Atrium

Sirota and three members of yMusic, a group she founded in 2008 in New York, will present a free, casual lunchtime concert of works for flute and string trio. Hailed by NPR’s Fred Child as “one of the groups that has really helped to shape the future of classical music,” yMusic was created to bring a classical chamber music aesthetic to venues outside the traditional concert hall. The group’s “six hip virtuosi” (Time Out NY) are equally comfortable in the overlapping classical and pop music worlds and have performed at prominent stages around the world. The group’s members have individually toured and recorded with artists as diverse as Bjork, Rufus Wainwright, Yo-Yo Ma and the New York Philharmonic.

Details: Noon in the Taubman Atrium of the Owen Arts Center on the SMU campus. Admission is FREE. For information call 214-768-1951.

April 12: SYZYGY New Music Ensemble Benefit for New Amsterdam, “Fill the Present Day with Joy”

Sirota joins SYZYGY for this concert benefiting New Amsterdam Presents, a Brooklyn-based arts organization whose headquarters suffered severe damage after Hurricane Sandy. Sirota will play side by side with Meadows students in Ruben Naeff’sFill the Present Day with Joy, a song for soprano, viola and piano taken from Facebook posts.

The program also will feature world premieres by Meadows students Nathan Courtright and Michael Nesuda alongside recent works by Caleb Burhans and New Amsterdam Co-Director Judd Greenstein.

Details: 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium in the Owen Arts Center on the SMU campus. Tickets are $13 for adults, $10 for seniors, $7 for students and SMU faculty/staff. For information call 214-768-2787.

April 14: Nadia Sirota

Sirota performs music for viola and electronics from her new CDBaroque, including music by Daníel Bjarnason, Judd Greenstein and Nico Muhly.

Details: 7 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium in the Owen Arts Center on the SMU campus. Admission is FREE. For information call 214-768-1951.

ABOUT NADIA SIROTA:

Hailed by The New York Times as “a bold new-music interpreter and the violist of choice among downtown ensembles these days,” Sirota is best known for her unique interpretations of new scores and for premiering works by some of the most talented composers of her generation, including Marcos Balter, Caleb Burhans, Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli and Nico Muhly. She is a founding member of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), yMusic, and the Wordless Music Orchestra and is a regular guest with groups such as the Meredith Monk Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound and Continuum. Her debut album, First Things First, was a New York Times 2009 record of the year. She has collaborated with such artists as Itzhak Perlman and the Silk Road Ensemble and performed with songwriters and bands worldwide, including work on new and recent albums by Grizzly Bear, Jónsi, The National, Ratatat, Doveman and My Brightest Diamond, and on Arcade Fire’s Grammy-winning album The Suburbs. She has also appeared on such shows as Late Night with Conan O’Brien and NPR’s Morning Edition.

Sirota received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School. In addition to her work as a performer, Sirota has served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music in its new contemporary music performance master’s degree program since 2007.

Tania Bruguera

Bruguera will be at SMU April 7-20, returning September 22-October 5. In addition to serving as a guest lecturer for various Meadows classes, participating in an art and urbanism forum and conducting a workshop for students on “The Use of Art” (which will begin work on a new public art commission for SMU to be completed in the fall when Bruguera returns to campus), she will give a public lecture:

April 10: Evening Lecture

Bruguera will provide an overview of her work and significant projects.

Details: 6:30 p.m. in O’Donnell Hall, Room 2130 in the Owen Arts Center at 6101 Bishop Blvd. on the SMU campus. Admission is FREE. For information, call 214-768-2489.

ABOUT TANIA BRUGUERA:

Bruguera is a Cuban-born interdisciplinary artist working primarily in behavior art, performance, installation and video.­ Her work researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life, with much of it pivoting around growing concerns about the political representation and conditions facing immigrants. She seeks to create a public forum to debate ideas shown in their state of contradictions and to focus on the transformation of the condition of “viewer” into one of“citizenry.” Her work has been featured in Documenta 11 in Germany and in the Venice, Johannesburg, Sáo Paolo, Shanghai and Havana biennials. Her work has also been exhibited at the New Museum in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and in other museums worldwide, and is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Germany, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Cuba and other institutions. In 1998 she was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2000 she received the Prince Claus Prize from The Netherlands. In March 2011, Bruguera began a five-year social project, Immigrant Movement International, the first year of which was sponsored by Meadows Prize winner Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art. IM International functions as a think tank for immigrant issues; from its storefront headquarters in Corona, Queens, Bruguera and other staff and volunteers offer free educational, artistic and consciousness-raising activities to a community of immigrants. Bruguera is a proponent of “arte útil” (useful art), meaning art that can be implemented in people’s lives in ways that address social and political problems. In February, she launched a new project with the Queens Museum and Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, culminating in the transformation of the old building of the Van Abbemuseum into the Museum of Arte Útil this fall.

# # #