Yotam Haber named first recipient of The ASCAP Foundation Composer Fellowship.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- May 14, 2010 -- The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s leading artist residency program, and The ASCAP Foundation are pleased to announce Yotam Haber as the recipient of the first ASCAP Foundation Composer Fellowship. Funded by a 2010 ASCAP Foundation grant, the Fellowship covers all costs of a residency at the Colony for a composer, which includes exclusive benefits of working in a vibrant multidisciplinary community of artists from two to eight weeks.
Commenting on the new fellowship, ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams said, “ASCAP member and American music great Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian, founded The MacDowell Colony to encourage the creation of new art, literature and music. The MacDowell Colony and The ASCAP Foundation are natural partners, so we are delighted to inaugurate this new ASCAP Foundation Composer Fellowship program at the Colony.”
Founded in 1975, The ASCAP Foundation is a publicly supported charitable organization dedicated to supporting American music creators and encouraging their development through music education and talent development programs. Included in these programs are songwriting workshops, scholarships, awards, recognition, and community outreach programs, public service projects for senior composers and lyricists, and grants for 501(c)(3) organizations engaged in educational programs for songwriters and composers.
Yotam Haber, the first recipient of the new ASCAP Foundation Composer Fellowship, has composed work that has been performed in venues all over the world, including Carnegie Hall, the American Academy in Rome, and Bargemusic in New York City. His numerous honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and commissions from Meet the Composer and the American Composers Forum. In receiving the Fellowship, Haber joins a distinguished group of Colony Fellow composers who are also affiliated with ASCAP, including Clarice Assad, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Barbara Kolb, David Lang, and David Del Tredici. All ASCAP members who apply through MacDowell’s normal application process are considered for the Fellowship.
Since being founded in 1907, The MacDowell Colony has provided vital time and space to more than 1,000 composers, enabling them to focus exclusively on their work. Set on 450 woodland acres in Peterborough, New Hampshire, MacDowell welcomes more than 250 composers, writers, visual artists, architects, filmmakers, theatre artists, and interdisciplinary artists from the United States and abroad each year. The sole criterion for acceptance is talent; a panel in each discipline selects Fellows.
