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NEA National Heritage Fellows Concert Featured on American Routes Radio Program2009 concert features some of the nation’s greatest living musical contributors December 22, 2009
Washington, DC --What better way to celebrate the holidays than with some of the country’s greatest living musical contributors. Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts encourages everyone to tune into American Public Media’s American Routes on public radio stations nationwide from December 23 through January 1 to hear the 2009 NEA National Heritage Fellows concert. Recorded live at the Strathmore Music Center near Washington, DC on September 24, and hosted by American Routes’s Nick Spitzer, the concert features interviews and music from this year’s honorees, including zydeco's Queen Ida, the gospel group The Birmingham Sunlights, and Puerto Rican cuatro genius Edwin Colón Zayas. In addition to the 2009 honorees, previous NEA National Heritage Fellows—such as B.B. King and Earl Scruggs—will also drop in to visit with folklorist Spitzer. The NEA National Heritage Fellows program is the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Fellowship recipients are nominated by the public, often by members of their own communities, and then judged by a panel of experts in folk and traditional arts on the basis of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers. Since 1982, the Endowment has awarded 349 NEA National Heritage Fellowships to a wide array of musicians, weavers, basket makers, quilters, tradition bearers, dancers and others. To find your local listing, or stream the program on demand, go to http://americanroutes.publicradio.org/.
National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency |
