National Medal Winner
Brubeck, David, National Medal of Arts, 1994"I think that I am qualified to speak only of my own work. If there is one thing from my life's work that I would like to see included it would be my composition, ‘Mass: To Hope!' ‘Sing joyfully to God all you on earth' are the opening words and a message for the next millennium...This mass has a history of having been performed in many different places on many different occasions. It was performed in Oklahoma City after the bombing of the Federal Building...Most memorably, to me, was its performance in Moscow in 1998 by the Russian National Orchestra and the Orloff choir, along with my Quartet, certainly a marker of the drastic changes in the relationship between our two countries. Until 1988 and ‘glasnost' my Quartet and recordings were forbidden in the Soviet Union."