Congratulations to Curtis's 2024 GRAMMY Winners!
The 2024 GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony was held on on Sunday, February 4 at the Peacock Theater. Among those honored are several celebrated faculty and alumni of Curtis who are in the front rank of musicians worldwide. Yuja Wang (Piano ’08), Eric Owens (Opera ’95), Teddy Abrams (Conducting ’08), Imani Winds, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Edgar Meyer won awards. Maestro Nézet-Séguin, Mr. Abrams, and the Imani Winds were present to accept their awards and made acceptance speeches.
Curtis faculty member and double bassist Edgar Meyer‘s album As We Speak with Béla Fleck and Zakir Hussain, featuring Rakesh Chaurasia, won awards for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album and Best Global Music Performance for the song “Pashto.”
Under the Best Opera Recording category, Curtis mentor conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin won the award with the Metropolitan Opera for Blanchard’s Champion, featuring Ryan Speedo Green; Latonia Moore; and Eric Owens (Opera ’95), director of vocal studies and Curtis Opera Theatre.
Alumna Yuja Wang (Piano ’08) and conductor Teddy Abrams (’08) of the Louisville Orchestra won the GRAMMY for Best Classical Instrumental Solo album for The American Project, featuring new works written for her: Abrams’s Piano Concerto and Tilson Thomas’s You Come Here Often?.
Finally, in the category for Best Classical Compendium, acclaimed Curtis faculty members Imani Winds won the GRAMMY Award, among other artists, for the album Passion for Bach and Coltrane. Mark Dover, the Imani’s clarinetist, was also a producer on the album.
Curtis Faculty and Alumni Nominees for the 2024 GRAMMY Awards
Edgar Meyer was also nominated for Best Instrumental Composition for his song “Motion” on the As We Speak album.
Under the category of Best Orchestral Performance, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Karina Canellakis (Violin ’04), was nominated for Bartók: Concerto For Orchestra.
In addition to the above win for Champion, Yannick Nézet-Séguin received a Best Orchestral Performance nomination for Price: Symphony No. 4; Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony with The Philadelphia Orchestra.
In the Best Opera Recording category, baritone Jarrett Ott (Opera ’04) earned a nomination as part of the cast of John Corigliano’s The Lord of Cries, with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Odyssey Opera, and Gil Rose.
William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair Anthony McGill (Clarinet ’00) was nominated alongside the Pacifica Quartet, of which violist Mark Holloway (’05) is a member, for their collaborative album American Stories in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category. The Catalyst Quartet, featuring alumna Abi Fayette (Violin ’17, CAF ’20), was nominated in the same category for Uncovered, Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still & George Walker. The first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Mr. Walker attended Curtis from 1941 to 1945.
Under the category of Best Classical Compendium, the work of the late composer, pianist, vocalist, and Curtis alumnus Julius Eastman (Piano ’63) was featured on Wild Up’s nominated album, Julius Eastman, Vol. 3: If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? with conductor Christopher Rountree.
Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees and winners!
