CURRENT WINNERS
Congratulations to the 2008 winners of the Alumni Astral Award!
Remy Le Boeuf, 2004 YoungArts winner in Jazz Saxophone, and Pascal Le Boeuf, 2004 YoungArts Winner in Jazz Keyboard
Remy and Pascal are twins that have collaborated their talent into an album entitled House without a Door.
Since their experience at YoungArts week, Remy and Pascal have graduated from Manhattan School of Music and have made a name for themselves in the New York Jazz scene. Only a few weeks after being selected for YoungArts week, Pascal was chosen as the youngest winner ever of the prestigious ASCAP/IAJE commission honoring Quincy Jones and he and Remy premiered the winning composition at the IAJE convention in New York along with Chris Potter, John Benitez, and Marcus Gilmore. That same year they also released their second album, Migration, which later won Best Album and Best Song in the Independent Music Awards.
Other recognition and awards: the Grammy Foundation, Downbeat Magazine, John Coltrane Foundation, Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead, The Henri Mancicni Institute, ASCAP, The ASCAP Young Composers Awards, The North American Saxophone Alliance, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, West Coast Songwriters Association, and the Independent Music Awards.
They plan to use the award to help with their expenses in putting together their newest album House without a Door made up of all original compositions. The album also features Marcus Strickland, 1997 YoungArts Winner in Jazz Sax and Billy Norris, 2006 YoungArts Winner in Double Bass.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, 2003 YoungArts Winner in Poetry
Branden
has written what he considers his “most mature work to date”, Neighbors, a full-length “tragedy with cartoons” which explores issues of race and performance in contemporary America.
Since his YoungArts week experience, Banden has graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelors degree in Anthropology, Creative Writing, and Theatre and NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a Masters degree in Performance Studies. He was hired on the editorial staff of the
New Yorker Magazine as a member of literary and critics departments.
Awards: Morris W. Croll Prize for Poetry, Frances LeMoyne Page Theatre Award, Mary Quaintance Prize for Creative Arts, two Ward Mathis prizes, one-year emerging Artists Fellowship for Playwriting from the NY theatre Workshop, invitation to participate in
EmergeNYC.
Wrote/premiered Thirst, or Getting to Know Me
Wrote/premiered Face
Co-wrote/premiered Garbage
Co-writing The Breakthrough
Premiering Face II
He plans to use the award to supplement various expenses involved with mounting Neighbors for the 2008 Prelude Festival .
