Composer and pianist H. Leslie Adams wins the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize Life Achievement Award

Thu - March 28, 2024, 4:23 pm

 

Composer and pianist H. Leslie Adams wins the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize Life Achievement Award

 

Composer and pianist H. Leslie Adams wins the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize $10,000 Life Achievement Award for his career as a pianist and composer.

 

His music is published by American Composers Alliance, and includes Nightsongs, a song cycle on poetry of African-American writers, and his Twenty-Six Etudes for Solo Piano, recorded most recently by pianists Thomas Otten and Maria Corley. A newly engraved edition of Nightsongs and ten Etudes from his collection is now available through ACA.  

 

The ticketed awards ceremony will take place at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Thursday, June 25, from 6:30 - 8 pm, with an after-party reception scheduled for 8 pm that evening.

 

Other honorees include the Belkin brothers, who won the Martha Joseph Prize. This award is given to arts leaders whose "exceptional commitment, vision, leadership or philanthropy have made a significant contribution to the vitality and stature of the arts in Northeast Ohio."
 

William Gould won the Robert P. Bergman Prize, named for the late director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The prize is awarded to individuals "whose life and activities communicate the joys, excitement and deep human relevance of the arts to broad segments of the Northeast Ohio community." Gould "is an artist of multiple talents, from architecture and urban planning to watercolor paintings of industrial and residential scenes. During his more than 50-year career, he has had a significant impact on the Cleveland urban landscape, including the preservation of significant historical industrial buildings."
 

The Emerging Artist Awards this year go to Gianna Commito (visual arts) and Mary Weems (literature), and the Mid-Career Awards go to Felise Bagley (dance) and Michelangelo Lovelace (visual arts). The Emerging and Mid-Career winners each will receive $10,000 as part of their prize.
 

Julian Stanczak, an internationally recognized artist and major figure in the Op Art movement, is a Special Honoree for 2015. He won the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1969.
 

For more info on the awards ceremony, please visit clevelandartsprize.org.