The Hermitage Artist Retreat Announces Upcoming Outdoor Beach Program: “Future Tradition” A Special Evening with Pulitzer Prize Winner & Grammy Award Nominee Du Yun

December 2, 2020 – Sarasota

The Hermitage Artist Retreat’s popular beachfront series continues with “Future Tradition,” featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and performer Du Yun, Friday, December 18, 5 p.m. This outdoor event is at the Hermitage Beach; entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood. Capacity will be limited to accommodate safe social distancing, so early reservations are recommended. Masks are strongly encouraged. Registration is required at HermitageArtistRetreat.org. Please note: starting in 2021, to accommodate added capacity restrictions and social-distancing measures, a modest five dollar per person registration charge will be added to confirm your space.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, Du Yun works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theater, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts, and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world. Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera Angel’s Bone won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; in 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and in 2019, she was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category for her work Air Glow. As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by The New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”

Yun founded Future Tradition, a global initiative that illuminates the lineages of folk art and uses these structures to build cross-regional collaborations from the ground up.  Yun has collaborated with artists and musicians of United Arab Emirates, Istanbul, Central Asia, and China. She led a team of performing artists, scholars, documentary filmmakers, and visual artists, working closely together with local regional opera troupes, as well as masters and amateurs of traditional art forms, to create new works. In addition to fostering new art, this platform illuminates existing traditional repertoires from different cultures by setting them side by side. At its heart, Future Tradition focuses on developing new works through cultural dialogue by looking at an art form’s DNA. 

Yun is professor of composition at the Peabody Institute, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. A community champion, she was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble; served as the Artistic Director of MATA Festival; and conceived the Pan Asia Sounding Festival (National Sawdust). In 2018, Yun was named one of 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Foundation, and the Beijing Music Festival named her “Artist of the Year.” Hear Du Yun’s music and see her images here: ChannelDuYun.com

The Hermitage hosts artists on its Gulf Coast Manasota Key campus for multi-week residencies. Artists come from around the world and across multiple disciplines create and develop new works of visual art, theater, music, literature, and more. As part of their residencies, Hermitage Fellows are asked to participate in community programs, affording audiences in our region the unique opportunity to engage with some of the world’s leading artists and to get a “sneak peek” into extraordinary projects and artistic minds before their works go on to major galleries, concert halls, theaters, and museums around the world. These programs include performances, lectures, interactive experiences, open studios, school programs, teacher workshops, and more, serving thousands in our regional community each year. 

For reservations (required) or more information about the Hermitage, visit HermitageArtistRetreat.org.