The National Music Prize 2014 corresponds, on a shared basis, to saxophonist and musicologist Leonardo Acosta, and guitarist Sergio Vitier García Marruz, for their remarkable careers in the service of this art and Cuban culture in general, announced a jury made up of extraordinarily distinguished figures of Cuban music.
The nonagenarian composer Alfredo Diez Nieto, president of the jury, emphasized the unanimous decision since both artists have more than enough merit to deserve the highest award that Cuba delivers in music.
Jesús Gómez Cairo, Director of the National Museum of Music, said the jury, which also included Alicia Perea, César “Pupy Pedroso” and Sebastián Piñera, awarded with this decision, in the case of Acosta, a meritorious career as an instrumentalist in several of the best known groups and along artists in the last half of the last century. Also his creative work along Leo Brouwer during creation of the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (GESI) and its essential investigative work, among which newspaper articles, essays and books are mostly about Cuban music, work for which he earned the 2006 National Prize for Literature.
Regarding Vitier, Gómez Cairo noted his invaluable musical production for the cinema to compose over 50 soundtracks, ballet, theater and television; to which he add the treatment to the African roots of music without setting them apart from the Hispanic heritage, passing through the GESI and a major record registration composed of titles like Cuerdas cubanas, his CD Our song, which he recorded together with Martha Valdés, and the disc Concierto habanero dedicated entirely to symphonic music.
Jurors noted that although the recognition is for both artists is not a shared prize, as both have merit and sufficient value to merit the distinction.
The date of the official presentation of the National Music Prize has not been released yet.
