Two Kansas Citians were announced yesterday as winners of this year's very prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships.
Composer NarongPrangcharoen, a UMKC Conservatory of Music & Dance graduate, and photographer Mike Sinclair were among the 175 names announced.
A Guggenheim winner gets enough money to pursue his art in-depth for six months to a year and they get a very impressive line on their resumes.
Friday on Up to Date, Steve Kraske talks with Prangcharoen about his music, and with Sinclair about his photography.
Learn more about Narong Prangcharoen's music and Mike Sinclair's photography.
Composer Narong Prangcharoen has won the Alexander Zemlinsky International Composition Competition Prize, the 18th ACL Yoshiro IRINO Memorial Composition Award, the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Competition Prize, the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, and most recently, the Annapolis Charter 300 International Composers Competition Prize. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award, one of Thailand’s most prestigious honors. The Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the Grant Park Orchestra, the Nagoya Philharmonic, the Melbourne Symphony, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic have all performed his music. He studied with Dr. Narongrit Dharmabutra in Thailand, then with Drs. Stephen Taylor and David Feurzeig at Illinois State University. Prangcharoen went on to study at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, where his teachers included Drs. Chen Yi, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, and Paul Rudy. Prangcharoen has taught in the Western Music Department of Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok, Thailand, and was an instructional assistant professor of music in composition at Illinois State University. In addition to working as a freelance composer, he is currently teaching at the Community Music and Dance Academy of the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri in Kansas City. Prangcharoen is the founder of the Thailand Composition Festival in Bangkok, Thailand, now in its fifth year. Mike Sinclair is an architectural and fine art photographer. Based in Kansas City, Mo., he works for local and national clients. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Metropolis, Architectural Record and Interior Design. His fine art work is part of several public collections including The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and The Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.