JMG Reader Michael Abels Wins Pulitzer Prize For Music

The Post & Courier reports:

“Omar,” the opera by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, has won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for music.

The opera premiered at the Sottile Theatre on May 27, 2022, after years of development and then delay because of the COVID pandemic. It is the first opera written by Giddens, who is best known as a Grammy-award winning roots music artist, though she is classically trained. Abels is an accomplished Los Angeles-based composer of concert and film music, including the scores to Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” “Us” and “Nope.”

Of “Omar,” the Pulitzer Prize committee said in its May 8 announcement, it was “an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries; a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African-American traditions expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage.”

Read the full article. Longtime JMG readers will remember Abels as a regular commenter and in 2007 I was privileged with his invitation to attend his Carnegie Hall debut, where his piece Dances And Delights earned a standing ovation. My report on that evening is here. A full list of Abels’ film scores and awards is here.