Winners of the 55th annual ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards for outstanding books, articles, notes and broadcasts were announced Friday (Oct. 31). They included works that explored great musicians such as Donna Summer, Sinéad O'Connor, John Williams and Miles Davis.
The recipients of the 2024 awards are as follows:
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast/Media Award in Pop Music: Directors Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, for their HBO documentary, Love to Love You, Donna Summer.
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast/Media Award in Concert Music: Journalist and author Jon Burlingame for his interview with John Williams on the Disney Music Group podcast, Disney for Scores.
In addition, a Special Recognition Award in the above category is presented in memory of “alt-country impresario” Jeremy Tepper, musician, producer, programmer and executive director of SiriusXM's Outlaw Country and Willie's Roadhouse channels.
ASCAP Foundation Paul Williams 'Loved the Liner Notes' Award for Pop Music: Deanie Parker and Robert Gordon for “Scribble and Hum” by Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos on Craft Recordings.
Special Recognition Awards in the above category are also presented to Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt for Matmos: Return to Archive on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, as well as Jeff Place and John W. Troutman for Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958-1971on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
The Loved the Liner Notes Award was established in 2016 and is sponsored by ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams.
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Book Awards in Pop Music: John Szwed for Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smithedited by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Allyson McCabe for Why Sinéad O'Connor matterspublished by the University of Texas Press.
A Special Recognition Award in the above category goes to Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards for Threadgill's memoir Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Musiced Alfred A. Knopf.
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Book Awards in Music Concert: Denise Von Glahn for Circle of Winners: How the Guggenheim Foundation Composition Awards Shaped American Musical Culturepublished by the University of Illinois Press, and also by Lois Svard for The musical brain: What students, teachers and performers need to knowpublished by Oxford University Press.
Special Recognition Awards in the above category are presented to Dan Gutstein for Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Janepublished by the University Press of Mississippi, as well as by Howard Pollack for Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacypublished by the University of Illinois Press.
The award recipients for articles published in 2023 are:
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for an Article in the Field of Pop Music: Jeffrey Magee for his article “'Honor the Source': Race, Representation and Intellectual Property in Jelly's Last Jam”, was published in the magazine Musical Theater Studies.
The Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for an article in concert music: Tina Frühauf for her article “The Dialectics of Nationalism: Jaromír Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper and Antisemitism in Interwar Europe”, published in Cambridge Opera Journal.
The Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism in Pop Music: Lewis Porter for his article, “Miles Davis Didn't Exactly Steal the Tunes,” published by Play with Lewis Porter! in the Substack.
The Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism in Concert Music: Kerry O'Brien and William Robin for their work 'On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement', published by the University of California Press.
The ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards, established in 1967 to honor the memory of ASCAP composer, critic, commentator and former president Deems Taylor, are made possible by the generous support of the Virgil Thomson Foundation. Thompson was a noted American composer and critic and former ASCAP board member.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/2024-ascap-foundation-deems-taylor-virgil-thomson-awards-full-list-1235815975/
