Robert Kyr Receives Arts and Letters Award

A Time For Life composer Robert Kyr has been awarded the prestigious Arts and Letters Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The award honors outstanding artistic achievement by a composer who has arrived at his or her own artistic voice. In addition to an honorarium, the award offers funds toward music recording. Candidates for music awards may only be nominated by members of the academy, who are judged by a panel of academy members. The panel selects each winner by evaluating a portfolio of compositions as well as a resume detailing artistic and professional achievements.

Robert Kyr will receive the award at the academy’s annual ceremonial in May.

Robert Kyr Talks about A Time For Life:

Robert Kyr: A Time For Life

An environmental oratorio by composer Robert Kyr, commissioned by Cappella Romana in 2007 and now recorded for the first time, this work explores the urgent issue of ecological crisis caused by humanity s inability to live in harmony with the natural world. A Time for Life draws from texts in Greek Orthodoxy, the Bible, and Native American prayers with an ultimately optimistic approach. The work traces a journey from the glory of Creation through potential modern destruction to a hopeful future, in which humanity serves as a responsible steward of the earth and thus realigns itself with the creative forces of existence, resulting in a spiritual awakening that leads from a state of division and separation to the way of unity and wholeness.