The Vermont Arts Council is pleased to announce that renowned musician and composer, Christian Wolff, will be the 2011 recipient of the Walter Cerf Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. Mr. Wolff will be honored in a ceremony on November 4, 2011 at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier, VT.
The Walter Cerf Award is presented to individuals who have made a sustained contribution to the arts and have had an impact on Vermont's cultural life. The award is named in honor of the late philanthropist Walter Cerf whose generous gifts, exceeding $5 million, have benefited numerous Vermont institutions including the Arts Council. Mr. Cerf was instrumental in establishing the Arts Endowment at the Vermont Community Foundation, and his contributions have created a $1 million fund to assist Vermont's artists and arts organizations.
Christian Wolff studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition, briefly, with John Cage. Mostly self-taught as composer, the work of Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Earle Brown have been important to him. His work has been especially concerned with allowing performers (both professional and amateur) various degrees of freedom in the process of performance.
Wolff is active as performer and improviser. Academically trained as a classicist, he has taught at Harvard and from 1971 to 1999, and at Dartmouth College where he taught classics, comparative literature and music. He has received awards and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, DAAD Berlin, the Asian Council, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (the John Cage award), and honorary degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Huddersfield. He is a member of the Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Mr. Wolff will be honored as part of the Vermont Arts Gala: A Celebration of the Arts in Vermont on Friday, November 4. The Gala will take place at the Capitol Plaza in the Governor's Ballroom and will begin with a reception and cocktail hour at 6pm, with award presentations beginning at 7pm. Additional recipients include Julia Alvarez, receiving the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and Sydney Lea, the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Vermont.
This event is free and open to the public. The Arts Council is requesting that attendees bring a non-perishable food item, which will be collected at the event, and given to a local food shelf. More information, including an RSVP form are available online at www.vermontartscouncil.org.
Since 1964, the Vermont Arts Council has been the state’s primary provider of funding, advocacy and information for the arts in Vermont. It strives to increase public awareness of the positive role artists and arts organizations play in communities and to increase opportunities for Vermonters to experience the arts in everyday life. The Council is the only designated State Arts Agency in the U.S. that is also an independent, not-for-profit, membership organization.
