Tuesday 14 May 2013

RPS Music Awards 2013

Our blog might have fallen rather silent over the last few months, but the RPS certainly has not!


The annual RPS Music Awards, the ‘Oscars’ of live classical music, took place at the Dorchester Hotel on 14 May. We were thrilled that Dame Janet Baker CH presented the Awards to this year's winners across the 13 categories:

Audiences and Engagement: Universe of Sound (Philharmonia Orchestra)
Chamber Music and Song: Music in the Round
Chamber-Scale Composition: Rebecca Saunders: Fletch
Concert Series and Festivals: New Music 20x12 (PRS for Music Foundation)
Conductor: Kirill Karabits
Creative Communication: Classic FM
Ensemble: Britten Sinfonia
Instrumentalist: Steven Osborne
Large-Scale Composition: Gerald Barry: The Importance of Being Earnest
Learning and Participation: Cycle Song (Proper Job Theatre Company and Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir)
Opera and Music Theatre: Mittwoch aus Licht (Birmingham Opera Company)
Singer: Sarah Connolly
Young Artists: Heath Quartet

Congratulations to all of our winners and shortlisters!


RPS Award winners at the 2013 ceremony









During the ceremony, we also marked our bicentenary by presenting five special RPS Honorary Memberships. These international music makers have put music at the heart of some of the most challenged communities in the world, supported young musicians and made a profound difference to diversity in music making. The short videos below offer a a window onto the vital work of these extraordinary people.





Our new Honorary Members are:

►  Armand Diangienda, a former airline pilot who founded a symphony orchestra in one of the poorest cities on earth, Kinshasa, DR of the Congo

►  Dr Ahmad Sarmast, the founder of Afghanistan’s first national music school in Kabul

►  Rosemary Nalden, British viola player and founder of Buskaid, who persuaded distinguished musicians to busk at British railway stations to raise funds for a string project in South Africa, and now directs the thriving stringed instrument school in Diepkloof, Soweto.

Our new RPS Honorary Members
►  Ricardo Castro, International pianist (and former winner of the Leeds Piano Competition) who established a flourishing youth music programme in Bahià, Brazil.


Aaron P. Dworkin, the founder of the Sphinx Organization, which gives opportunities and assistance to aspiring Black and Latino musicians in the USA. Sphinx’s mission is for classical music to embrace the diversity inherent in the society that it strives to serve.

Popular Posts