 United States Artists, an organization
dedicated to supporting America's finest artists working across
diverse disciplines, announced the selection of Rob
Ickes as the 2010 United States Artists Cummings Fellow at
a ceremony tonight at the Lincoln Center.
The USA Fellows program awards a
$50,000 grant to fifty artists each year in the disciplines of
music, theater arts, visual arts, dance, literature, media,
crafts/traditional arts, and architecture/ design. United States
Artists was formed by the Ford Foundation in 2005 with $22 million
in seed funding from The Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson and Prudential
Foundations, with a mission "to invest in America's finest artists
and illuminate the value of artists to society."
USA Fellowship nominations are made
by an anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and
artists chosen by USA. An expert panel for each discipline then
chooses the USA Fellows to be recommended for approval by the USA
Board. Previous USA fellows from the field of music include
Michael Doucet, Bill Frisell, Ali Akbar Kahn, Terry Allen, Lionel
Loueke, violinist Leila Josefowicz, jazz musician Muhal Richard
Abrams, and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk.
Katharine DeShaw, USA Executive
Director, described the 2010 recipients as follows: "Chosen for
the caliber and impact of their work, the USA Fellows for 2010 hail
from 18 states and Puerto Rico, range in age from 32 to 71, and
represent some of the most innovative and diverse creative talents
in the country."
Ickes is the first artist with roots
in bluegrass music to be named a USA Fellow. His work spans
multiple genres, and Ickes plans to use his fellowship to continue
to explore "the vast musical potential that the dobro has to
offer," and to raise the visibility of the instrument.
WATCH THE ANNOUNCEMENT
AND CELEBRATION , STREAMING LIVE FROM JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER AT 8pm
ET: The 2010 USA Fellows will be announced tonight at
8:00pm, followed by a celebration with special performances by
several Fellows from prior years. Watch a live stream of the
announcement and celebration at www.unitedstatesartists.org (a video will also
be archived and available for viewing on USA's website after the
event). |
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About
Rob Ickes
A Northern California native,
Rob Ickes moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined Blue Highway, the
highly esteemed bluegrass band, as a founding member in 1994. He is
recognized as one of the most innovative Dobro players on the scene
today, contributing signature technique and greatly expanding the
boundaries of the instrument's sonic and stylistic territory. He
won the International Bluegrass Music Association's Dobro Player of
the Year award for a record-setting twelfth time in 2010, and is
the most awarded instrumentalist in the history of the IBMA
awards.
An active session player and
touring musician, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists,
including Merle Haggard, Earl Scruggs, Tony Rice, Charlie Haden,
David Grisman, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, David Lee Roth, Dolly
Parton, Patty Loveless, Peter Rowan, Claire Lynch, andMary Chapin
Carpenter.
His most recent release is Road
Song (ResoRevolution), a dobro-piano jazz album. He has
also
released four acclaimed solo
albums on Rounder, nine albums with Blue Highway (Rounder, Ceili,
Rebel) and a CD with Three Ring Circle (Rob, Andy Leftwich &
Dave Pomeroy). The youngest dobro player on The Great Dobro
Sessions (Jerry Douglas & Tut Taylor, producers), which won the
1994 Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, he was also on the Alison
Krauss & The Cox Family album, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, which
won the 1994 Grammy for Best Southern Gospel.
Rob is also a gifted resonator
guitar teacher; in 2007, he founded ResoSummit, a three-day annual
instructional event in Nashville, featuring leading Dobro players
and luthiers as faculty. |
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information: