Osmo Vänskä receives 2010 Ditson Conductor's Award from Columbia University

9 November 2010

Columbia University has awarded Osmo Vänskä the 2010 Ditson Conductor’s Award for the advancement of American music. Presented on 29 October at the Minnesota Orchestra’s Future Classics concert, an annual showcase for presenting the works of emerging American composers, Vänskä was awarded a citation on behalf of Columbia’s President Lee C. Bollinger.

“In his role as Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä has shown remarkable commitment not only in performing contemporary music but especially in fostering the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, an annual mentoring program in which the Orchestra rehearses and performs works by young American composers,” said Fred Lerdahl, secretary of the Alice M. Ditson Fund and the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia. “The Institute is justly regarded as an exemplary program of its kind. It provides young composers with an opportunity to hear their works performed by an orchestra of the highest calibre.”

Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University established the Ditson Conductor’s Award in 1945. It is the oldest award honoring conductors for their support of American music. Previous recipients include Christopher Keene, Mstislav Rostropovich, Leopold Stowkowski, Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy.

Columbia University website