Du Yun Wins Music Pulitzer For 'Angel's Bone'
Du Yun, a 39-year-old composer, musician and performance artist, today won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera Angel's Bone . The Pulitzer jury describes the piece as a bold work "that integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world." Angel's Bone , which has a libretto by the versatile Royce Vavrek (Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves and David T. Little's Dog Days ), was commissioned by New York's Prototype Festival and Trinity Wall Street, which staged the world premiere Jan. 6, 2016. The opera tells of a middle-American couple who find a pair of angels dropped into their backyard. They nurse the angels back to health — only to clip their wings and exploit them for money. Du Yun, reached by phone Monday afternoon while attending a cultural summit in Abu Dhabi, said that while she has never been a victim of human trafficking, she wanted to make the c