Skidmore's connection to 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners

Two individuals honored this week with Pulitzer Prizes have Skidmore connections - and one will visit the campus this fall to hear one of her works performed by two Skidmore faculty members.

Jennifer Higdon, one of the most-performed of living American composers, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Violin Concerto, a composition described as a "deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." 

Two Skidmore artists-in-residence - Jan Vinci, a flutist, and Pola Baytelman, a pianist - have commissioned Higdon to write a sonata for flute and piano, to receive its world premiere this November at a concert featuring Skidmore Music Department faculty celebrating the opening of the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Higdon will meet with classes earlier in the day and give a pre-concert talk.

A substantial three-movement sonata, the work - titled Flute Poetic?is the cornerstone of a larger performance and recording project that Vinci and Baytelman are developing to feature the work of American composers.

Support for the Higdon commission comes from the Skidmore President's Discretionary Fund, the College's Music Department, the Brannen-Cooper Fund, andJudy and John Bentley.

Higdon, whom Vinci taught flute in their home state of Tennessee, is no stranger to Skidmore. She was the featured artist for the Skidmore Flute Festival in 1998, performing her own works and collaborating with faculty and students. She also performed on Vinci's latest Albany Records CD, Global FluteScape: Premieres and Rare Gems.

The College's other Pulitzer connection is with Paul Harding, who won the Prize for Fiction for Tinkers, a first novel that the Pulitzer jury described as "a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality."

A drummer with a band called Cold Water Flat in the 1990s, Harding took advantage of a break in the band's touring schedule to attend the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, where he studied with Marilynne Robinson (who herself won a Pulitzer in 2005 for her novel, Gilead).

Professor of English Robert Boyers, director of the institute and editor of Salmagundi, said he was especially pleased that Harding was award the Pulitzer for a book that was issued by a small press (Bellevue Literary Press) rather than a commercial publisher.

"Again and again, we encourage our students to think only about writing well and to resist the temptation to tailor their works in progress to the requirements of the marketplace," Boyers added. "Paul Harding is a prime example of a writer who has known how to keep his priorities straight, and no one who has followed his progress was at all surprised to note that Tinkers was highly praised and recommended by his institute instructor Marilynne Robinson, who is herself one of the most esteemed writers in the country."

Read a New York Times  story on Harding and Tinkers.