Phillip Sink wins 2015 Hermitage Prize

The award for a young and promising composer includes a six-week residence at the Hermitage and a $1,000 prize.

By Nick Reichert
| 12:45 p.m. August 24, 2015

Phillip Sink, winner of this year's Hermitage Prize, and Bruce Rodgers, executive director of the Hermitage Artist Retreat, in Aspen, Colorado.

Arts + Culture

The Hermitage Artist Retreat continued its partnership with the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) in Aspen, Colo. and awarded this year's Hermitage Prize to up-and-coming composer Phillip Sink during the festival's composers' showcase.

First awarded in 2013, the prize is given to a promising composer who is enrolled as a composition student at the AMFS. Selected by a jury of contemporary composers and administration at the AMFS, Sink will receive a six-week residency at the Hermitage's campus in Englewood, Fla. as well as a $1,000 prize.

“Winning the Hermitage Prize is an incredible gift and I am truly grateful for this opportunity,” says Sink. “Going to an artist retreat will be a new experience for me. I look forward to working intensely in a creative environment alongside artists outside the music sphere and I predict that the interaction with other artists will help me better understand my own creative process.”

Phillip Sink, Alan Fletcher, Robert Spano and Bruce Rodgers at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

A rising name in the music world, Sink's compositions and music have been performed at festivals and concerts throughout America and Europe. Sink has also received the 2015 Dean’s Prize for chamber music at Indiana University, 2015 Boston New Music Initiative Call for Scores, 2015 Innovox Ensemble’s Call for Scores, 2013 Kuttner String Quartet Composition Competition and the 2013 NOTUS Prize.

Sink received his bachelor's degree in music composition/theory and music education from Appalachian State University in 2004. He would go on to earn his master's degree in music composition and music pedagogy at Michigan State University in 2012. He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in music composition at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“At first glance, AMFS and the Hermitage might appear as two opposites, one being so large in stature and the other so small,” says Bruce E. Rodgers, executive director of the Hermitage. “More importantly is what we do share: world class artists, who come to work at our venues. This is what makes our partnership a perfect melding of arts organizations.”