The Baryshnikov Arts Center announced Monday night that it had raised $1 million to establish a new Cage Cunningham Fellowship, and that the first recipient would be the Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov, who plans to use his award to commission new works.
The fellowship is designed to support artists who continue John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s commitment to innovation. Mr. Lubimov — who in the 1960s gave the Soviet premieres of a number of daring Western works — will use his $50,000 award to commission new pieces from five composers. Three are Russian — Anton Batagov, Pavel Karmanov and Sergei Zagny — and two, Bryce Dessner and Julia Wolfe, are American. (Ms. Wolfe won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her oratorio “Anthracite Fields.”)
Pavel Karmanov is one of the most popular Russian composers. Born in Siberia in 1970, he has been working in Moscow for more than 20 years. He started to compose music at the age of 5, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1995 and joined the Moscow Union of Composers a year later.
