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Issue #5 - 125 Lives Transformed
125 LIVES TRANSFORMED
For a quarter-century, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts has invested in artists, enriching CalArtsalong the way
By Kate Silver
Twenty-five years ago, Herb Alpert made a life-changing decision to help artists. The year was 1994, and Alpert attentively watched with concern as public funding dwindled for the arts. He considered his own good fortune and opportunities…he’d been given much, and he wanted to give back. Not only is Alpert a music legend with 9 Grammys and 72 million albums sold, he’s also the cofounder of A&M Records, which was one of the most powerful and successful record labels in the world. In his abundance, he saw opportunity.
“I decided I didn’t want to buy a Monet or a van Gogh painting and just hang it on my wall. I wanted to do something more meaningful with the good fortune I’ve had,” says Alpert. Alpert has supported CalArts in many directions, from a host of initiatives in the Institute’s School of Music that culminated in its 2008 renaming in his honor, to his foundation’s gifts to the CalArts Community Arts Partnership (CAP) and the Roy and Edna CalArts Theater (REDCAT). Former President Steven D. Lavine recalls the unique relationship’s origin in this way: “I remember the decisive moment coming when, in the course of a visit to CalArts, Herb and I walked past the music practice rooms. Herb stopped to listen to a saxophone player. He turned to me with a light in his eye and said, ‘You know, when that student was playing alto he sounded like Charlie Parker, but just now when he switched to tenor, you could hear a hint of Coltrane.’ The quote may not be exact, but I will always remember the way Herb lit up. Whether this moment came before or after his first gift to CalArts, I am certain this was the beginning of Herb’s deep engagement with CalArts. All the wonderful things Herb, Lani, and their foundation have done for CalArts go back to this moment of musical connection.” So, in partnership and collaboration with Lavine, Alpert launched The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, which is presented annually to risk-taking, midcareer artists in the categories of dance, film/video, music, theatre, and visual arts. The award is an unrestricted cash prize (initially, it was $50,000; since 2006, it has been $75,000) funded by the Herb Alpert Foundation and administered by CalArts. Each year, 50 nominators, 10 in each field, recommend two artists—who are then invited to apply—and five panels, composed of artists and arts professionals, select the five recipients. In addition to receiving the monetary award, each artist participates in a week-long residency at CalArts. Alpert says he chose to work with the Institute because the school just seemed to click with his vision. “I visited CalArts years back, and there was something about the place that really struck me, like, ‘Wow this is the type of school I would have liked to have gone to,’” he says. “Kids were congregating in the halls, there were nooks and crannies where people were discussing art, and musicians playing in all sorts of places—it seemed like they were really having a good time while also learning. CalArts struck me as a really creative place.”
Lani Hall and Herb Alpert
CalArts President Ravi S. Rajan says it’s been an honor for the school to be a part of the program. “A quarter of a century ago, Herb Alpert decided to try a bold experiment, offering generous funds, unrestricted, to help artists follow their passion,” he says. “Herb chose to work with CalArts—a bold experiment, itself—in carrying out this undertaking. Leading up to the 25th anniversary of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, 125 artists have benefited from the award, and all of the respect, support, and community that it offers. It’s changed the paths of their careers in ways that can’t be measured. But the benefits also reverberate beyond the recipients. Every single one of these artists has enriched CalArts, spending time on campus and at REDCAT to present, perform, and inspire the artists of today and tomorrow. A number have become faculty here, and several recipients have been CalArts alumni. It can’t be overstated that this award has helped make our world a more compassionate, insightful, magical place.” “We are gratified,” said Herb Alpert Foundation President Rona Sebastian, to celebrate with CalArts the shared vision of 25 years of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Under the exemplary direction of Director Irene Borger, this program has reached far and wide into the arts community and is appreciated for its high level of compassion, sensitivity, and respect for individual artists. This unique grant opportunity has become an important milestone for midcareer artists to be recognized by their peers, and often is a defining moment leading toward the next level of their careers.”
— Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert’s life-changing decision to help artists has affected many lives. In honor of the 25th anniversary of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, The Pool spoke with four past recipients of the award to find out how it’s impacted them. Here’s what they said.
CAULEEN SMITH
THE HERB ALPERT AWARD IN THE ARTS RECIPIENT IN FILM/VIDEO, 2016 Interdisciplinary artist and CalArts School of Art faculty
Cauleen Smith had been nominated for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts several times, so she was shocked in 2016 when she learned she’d won. “I applied each time because it’s a great honor for someone to think you’re deserving of it,” says Smith. “And it was really wonderful to know that my work was somehow, finally, deemed worthy of the Award.” Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, with roots in experimental filmmaking, and her work has screened at Studio Museum of Harlem, Houston Contemporary Art Museum, and MCA Chicago, among other museums and galleries. She says the Award afforded her a kind of financial cushion so that she could focus more intensely on her art, and less on paying bills. “It really freed me up to think about the things I wanted to make, as opposed to how to pay for them,” says Smith. “That was a big shift, and it’s been really helpful.” During her week at CalArts, Smith led a workshop on film production. At the time, a “super bloom” was coloring the desert, and she and her students ventured out to record it. The footage they shot can be seen in one of Smith’s recent films, Sojourner. In 2017, Smith was hired as faculty in CalArts’s School of Art. Here, she says she learns from her students—whom she considers her future colleagues—as much as they learn from her. “I feel like they keep me connected to generations coming forward and keep me really clear on what the priorities should be for all of us when thinking about the future,” she says. “If I do my job well I’ll be seeing them for years to come. I love that part of the process.” When she looks back on the Award and how it’s influenced her, she says that words such as “joyful” and “generosity” come to mind. “I appreciate that they ask very little of the artist. They just give you the money and send you on your way,” she says. “Hopefully, one day I will be able to pay it forward and do the same for other artists.”
Sojourner production still, 2018
ANNE LeBARON
THE HERB ALPERT AWARD IN THE ARTS RECIPIENT IN MUSIC, 1996 Composer and performer and faculty in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts
In 1996, when the award was in its infancy, Anne LeBaron was beginning to make a name for herself as a composer. After being nominated for the award, she applied, submitting her first opera, The E. & O. Line, an electronic blues opera named for Eurydice and Orpheus, set along the Mississippi River Delta. In some ways, the work was ahead of its time: LeBaron used early sampling technology to include fragments of blues recordings and the sounds of whooshing trains and train whistles in an electronic soundscape that reflected the regional and cultural setting. Learning that she had won The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts gave her an enormous boost of confidence in pursuing a full production of the opera. “The Award was a real validation of what I was doing as an artist,” says LeBaron. During her week-long residency at CalArts, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series programmed one of LeBaron’s chamber music works, composed as her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. She had the opportunity to meet the conductor for the concert, David Rosenboom, dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts. Looking back, LeBaron believes that her residency on campus helped, years later, when she joined the faculty at CalArts. While LeBaron—an accomplished harpist and composer whose works have been performed around the world—says she can’t know exactly how the Award has altered her path in life, she can proclaim, with certainty, that it’s sparked a spirit of generosity, whether that means helping students follow their dreams or being benevolent in other ways. “The Award was meaningful for me at the time,” she says, “and I have to say that now, it does inspire me to give back, too.”
Crescent City, opera, 2012
ERIK EHN
THE HERB ALPERT AWARD IN THE ARTS RECIPIENT IN THEATRE, 2001 Playwright and former dean of the School of Theater at CalArts
Erik Ehn will forever value the twists and turns his career—and his writing—took after receiving the recognition resulting from the Award. “The Award sparked conversations that led to relationships that knit to community, from which, reasons to write well up, and audiences form, and through which standards, practices, and accidents of joy emerge,” writes Ehn, via e-mail. The playwright, whose works, such as Erratics, The Saint Plays, Quiet House, and others, have been performed across the country,
Erik Ehn with students at CalArts
says that The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts encouraged him to expand and deepen experimentation in his art. It also introduced him to CalArts, which was something of an awakening. “CalArts is a rich and strange space station/biosphere—extraordinary, rare hearts and talents grow there. It’s a truly experimental matrix, and therefore invaluable for the field, both for the quality of the talents it produces, and the dares it throws down, urging itself and others beyond the imaginable.” It was the start of a long-lasting relationship: Ehn went on to become dean of the CalArts School of Theater. In 2006 and 2007, he led a delegation of CalArts students and faculty to Rwanda to explore the ways in which the arts were helping to rebuild in the
aftermath of the country’s genocide in the mid1990s. “The time is always right to consider how culture frames and enables inhumanity,” he says, “and how it can share in love’s triumph over suffering.” Following a stint as the director of writing for performance at Brown University, Ehn has gone from teacher back to student, as he pursues a master’s of theological studies at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California. He says that as a past recipient of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, he still feels connected to a small and vital community. “The Award’s process and follow-through genuinely prizes conversation,” he says. “I feel part of the family there, and have been, and hopefully will remain, in contact for years.”
Photograph from the set of Mycenaean
CARL HANCOCK RUX
THE HERB ALPERT AWARD IN THE ARTS RECIPIENT IN THEATRE, 2003 Multi-disciplinary writer and performer and former director of the MFA Writing for Performance Program in the CalArts School of Theater
Carl Hancock Rux has no doubt that his life is different because of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Author of the novel, Asphalt, the Obie award-winning play, Talk, and writer of the opera, Makandal, Rux ticks off the areas the Award has influenced without hesitation:
It helped bolster national awareness and validation of his career as a playwright. It has made him part of a small, exclusive community of talented peers, many of whom are experimental artists who had struggled to be seen and heard. It has given him a platform that made him visible for other awards. It has nourished his confidence as an artist. And it doesn’t stop there. Rux says the Award impacted his career in academia, leading him to a job as the head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at CalArts. That, in turn, led to other teaching or artist-in-residence positions at schools such as The University of Iowa, Hollins University, Brown University, and Yale University. It has also helped amplify his voice in an area about which he’s passionate. “I am able to advocate, with some authority, for an inclusivity that I have long believed absent in the realm of theater and performance,” says Rux. When reflecting on the Award, it’s clear that it didn’t just impact Rux. He sees every student he’s taught—and learned from—as a tree branch that also traces back to the Award. “I can honestly say I would not have been able to help develop the careers of invaluable new artists without having received The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts or teaching at CalArts,” says Rux. “The Award did as much for my career as it continues to do for the careers of others through my mentorship. It is a generative award that continues to cultivate new art and new forms.”
A quarter of a century and counting, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and CalArts have worked together to recognize creative visionaries and culture makers.
Irene Borger, director of the Award program, elaborates: “Herb had a hunch that a prize to artists—artists who took risks—could make a difference to the artists, certainly, and maybe even in the world. He said: ‘what if?’ That’s the commonality between Herb Alpert Award winners and CalArts: asking questions, not knowing what comes next. Or as a friend of mine who taught at CalArts said when asked to think outside the box: ‘WHAT BOX?’” “I really feel the heart and soul of our country is shaped by its artists,” says Herb Alpert. “I think they point the way.” With the support of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, those artists can focus on their passion and their talents, creating and inspiring a livelier world that benefits us all.
