This is incredibly exciting news. One of my old and dear friends, Aaron Dworkin, founder and director of the Sphinx Organization, which provides education and opportunities to minority youth in classical music, has been awarded a Macarthur Foundation Genius Fellowship for 2005. The Detroit Free Press reports:
Aaron Dworkin has devoted his career to building diversity in classical music, and anyone who has witnessed him on his soapbox knows he speaks with the passion of a preacher and the stamina of a filibustering senator.
But when he received the call last week informing him that he had won a MacArthur grant worth $500,000, he fell mute for perhaps the first time in his life.
"I'm rarely at a loss for words, but I couldn't even speak," said Dworkin, 35.
A former violinist, Dworkin is the founder of the innovative Sphinx Organization, a Detroit-based institution that promotes young black and Latino string players through an annual competition, scholarships, performances, music camps and other education programs. "Ideally, this will raise the visibility of these kids, because in the end, it's the kids who are truly fantastic," he said.
Dworkin is one of 25 MacArthur Fellows for 2005 announced today by the John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago.
Winners of these genius grants, as the awards are commonly called, receive no-strings funding of $500,000 over five years and are selected on the basis of creativity, originality and potential.
MacArthur Fellows are nominated by members of an anonymous committee, and candidates do not know they have been considered until they win. The grants are among the most prestigious and lucrative in any field.
Aaron, congratulations my friend. You deserve this for your tireless work helping so many young people realize their true potential. You have changed thousands of lives through your efforts and the Macarthur award not only recognizes that, it will undoubtedly help expand those opportunities to help thousands more. It brought tears to my eyes when I read of the award; I can only imagine how overwhelming it must feel for you and for all of the folks at Sphinx who share the award because they have worked so hard along with you to make it a reality. They could not have chosen a more worthy recipient.
Postscript: For a brief introduction and funny story about Aaron, see this earlier post.
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Ed, that's fantastic news, and congratulations to your friend. What he's doing is tremendously important!
Congratulations to your friend Aaron! You have shown me his pictures and told me so much about him. This is just marvelous and so deserved.
Congratulations to your friend and colleague. It's a wonderful achievement.
It raises a question that I have been wondering about for a number of years. When I was a kid in public school in Cincinnati (1950s and 1960s) we used to go on "field trips" to the Cincinnati Music Hall to listen to the orchestra play classical music. It was wonderful. Does anyone do that anymore, anywhere? We don't have children, so we don't follow the curriculum of the public schools that closely, but I'm just posing the question.
Aaron got a mention on tonight's Conan!
Congradulations to your friend. It's about time we got some possitive news amonst all the gloom and doom and paranoia the media usually feeds up.