Elaine Rinaldi and Orchestra Miami are the 2019 winners of The American Prize Ernst Bacon Award for the Performance of American Music, in the professional ensemble division, for their performance of Marvin David Levy’s Inquisition and Masada.
Orchestra Miami and Elaine Rinaldi were selected from applications reviewed recently from all across the United States.
The American Prize is the nation’s most comprehensive series of non-profit competitions in the performing arts, unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.
The American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music recognizes and rewards the best performances of American music by ensembles and soloists worldwide, based on submitted recordings. There is no live competition.
Applications are accepted from professional, college/university, community and high school age solo artists, chamber ensembles or conducted ensembles, competing in separate divisions, and from composers with excellent recordings of their works.
Beginning in 2017, categories were expanded to encompass performances of American music in practically any instrumentation or genre, with very few repertoire restrictions.
Ernst Bacon (1898-1990) was one of that pioneering generation of composers who, along with Thomson, Copland, Harris, and others, found a voice for American music. Winner of a Pulitzer Scholarship for his Symphony in D minor, and no fewer than three Guggenheim Fellowships, Ernst Bacon set out to create compositions that expressed the vitality and affirmative spirit of our country. It is fitting, and with honor, that The American Prize in 2016 created an annual award in the memory of Ernst Bacon, recognizing the finest performances of American music worldwide.
Elaine Rinaldi, founder and artistic director of Orchestra Miami, is a Miami native who has chosen to return home and reinvest in her community. Under her artistic supervision and direction, Orchestra Miami has performed high quality classical music concerts for literally thousands of people through its annual Free Outdoor Concerts and introduced over 25,000 school children to classical music through its collaboration with the MDCPS Cultural Passport Program, In-School Performances and Carnegie Hall Link Up concerts.Her recent engagements have included debuts at the Miami Music Festival for Die Zauberflöte and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Opera Orlando for Don Giovanni, Mezzano Romantico Summer Festival (Fiera di Primiero, Italy) for Suor Angelica/Gianni Schicchi and at the Tri-Cities Opera for Don Giovanni.
She was the principal guest conductor at the Dicapo Opera Theatre from 2001-06 and has led several tours for the National Lyric Opera, twice appeared as a guest conductor with the Albany Symphony for the Shaker Mountain Performing Arts Festival, and conducted performances of La Traviata for Island Opera Theater in Key West.
Rinaldi has held many positions as an assistant and/or cover conductor in many of this country’s leading regional opera theaters. From 1997-2000, she held the positions of resident associate conductor and chorus master at the Florida Grand Opera in Miami.Her awards have included the Agnis Varis/Intercities Performing Arts grant, the League of American Orchestra’s mentorship with Joann Faletta, Finalist for the American Prize for Orchestral Conducting and Orchestra Performance, the Newton Swift Prize for
Accompanying at the Mannes College of Music and the M. B. Byrd full tuition scholarship at the University of Miami Frost School of Music.
Additional information about the competitions on the website: www.theamericanprize.org.
