(From left to right) Joseph Pereira (CFA’96), Adrienne Elise Tarver (CFA’07), and Chay Yew (COM’92)

Arts Leadership

BU College of Fine Arts to Honor BU Alums in the Arts at the 2023 CFA Distinguished Alumni Awards

Boston University College of Fine Arts celebrates the recipients of the 2023 Distinguished Alumni Awards and Dean’s Arts & Humanities Award.

Since 1986, the CFA Distinguished Alumni Awards have been presented to individuals who have distinguished themselves with outstanding achievements in their careers, communities, and in service to the arts.

This event is free and open to the public. Residents of Boston, Brookline, and surrounding areas are invited to gather with the Boston University community to celebrate the recipients of the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumni Awards and Dean’s Arts & Humanities Award on Thursday, September 21, 2023, at 5pm in the BU Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre’s Yan Luo Lobby.

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Meet the 2023 Awardees

Joseph Pereira (CFA’96)

Joseph Pereira (CFA’96) enjoys a multi-faceted career as a timpanist/percussionist, composer, conductor, and teacher.

His work in all areas has been widely hailed for his creativity and virtuosity and has been profiled in feature articles in both The New York Times (2006) and The LA Times in 2012 and 2015. In 2015, Pereira was featured on the PBS series, “Craft in America.”

Pereira has been the Principal Timpanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2008. As a versatile performer, he regularly appears as a solo percussionist in the LA Phil’s “Green Umbrella” new music series and has also conducted his music and other world premieres on the orchestra’s chamber series. In Los Angeles, he also can be found in the recording studios and can be heard on many major motion pictures. Previously, Pereira was a member of the New York Philharmonic, from 1997 to 2008, as a timpanist and percussionist. His line of signature timpani mallets by JGPercussion are sold worldwide.

As a composer, Pereira’s music has been described as “restless yet lucidly textured” (The New York Times), “striking atmospherics of colour” (The Guardian), and “one sonic surprise after another” (The Los Angeles Times). His works have been commissioned and performed worldwide, most notably by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel, the Singapore Symphony, the New York Philharmonic Chamber Series, the Miro Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, percussionist Colin Currie, French Ensemble TM+, and the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet. He currently has a commission from the LA Phil for the 24/25 season. Pereira’s works are published by Bachovich Music in the US and Black Dot Press in the UK.

Pereira runs the percussion studio at the Thornton School of Music at University of Southern California (USC) and is also on the faculty of the Music Academy of the West, and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. He was previously on faculty at the Juilliard School from 2005-2013.

for more on pereira

Adrienne Elise Tarver (CFA’07)

Adrienne Elise Tarver (CFA’07) is an interdisciplinary artist with a practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, textiles, photography, and video.

She has exhibited nationally and abroad, including solo exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut; the Academy Art Museum in Maryland; Atlanta Contemporary in Georgia; Dinner Gallery in New York; OCHI in Los Angeles; Wave Hill in the Bronx; BRIC Project Room in Brooklyn; and A-M Gallery in Sydney, Australia and a two-person exhibition at Wedge Curatorial in Toronto, Canada. She has been commissioned through the New York MTA, the Public Art Fund, Google, Art Aspen, and Pulse Art Fair and has been featured in online and print publications including The New York Times, Forbes, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtNews, ArtNet, Blouin ArtInfo, Whitewall Magazine, and Hyperallergic, among others. She was nominated for and received the Nancy Graves Foundation Award and is in residency at Silver Art Projects at the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

CFA Magazine feature: Mining the Past, Mirroring the Present

Tarver was featured in the fall 2020 issue of CFA magazine, where Tarver spoke about her art and how it explores the perception of Black women.

read more

Tarver has worked and taught across the world including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the University of New South Wales in Sydney, AU; Savannah College of Art and Design’s Atlanta campus, and currently, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She created and hosted the podcast “Exquisite Corpse: Contemporary Conversations” and was previously the Director of Programs at the National Academy of Design, the Associate Chair of Fine Arts at SCAD Atlanta, and prior to that was the Director of Art & Design for the Harlem School of the Arts. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from Boston University.

for more on tarver

Chay Yew (COM’92)

Chay Yew (COM’92) is an award-winning director and playwright, accomplished artistic director, and prominent champion for diverse and inclusive theatre. 

As a director, Chay Yew’s New York credits include the Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Signature Theatre, New York City Center Encores!, Playwrights Realm, Audible Theatre, Rattlestick, Ensemble Studio Theatre, National Asian American Theatre Company, and Ma Yi. His regional credits include the Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Alley Theatre, South Coast Rep, Old Globe, Center Theatre Group, Hartford Stage, Denver Center Theater, Seattle Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Kennedy Center, Humana Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Huntington Theatre, Empty Space, Portland Center Stage, East West Players, Singapore Repertory Theatre, and others. His opera credits include the world premieres of Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s Ainadamar (Tanglewood, Lincoln Center and Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Rob Zuidam’s Rage D’Amors (Tanglewood). He is a recipient of the OBIE Award for Direction.

As a playwright, his plays include Porcelain, A Language of Their Own, Red, Wonderland, Question 27 Question 28, A Distant Shore, 17, and Visible Cities. His adaptations include A Winter People (based on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard), Ibsen’s Dollhouse, and Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba; a musical Alaskeros; and performance works, Vivien and the Shadows; Home: Places between Asia and America and A Beautiful Country. His work has been produced at the Public Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Manhattan Theatre Club, Long Wharf Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, Wilma Theatre, Portland Center Stage, East West Players, Dallas Theatre Center, Cornerstone Theatre Company, Group Theatre. Studio Theatre, amongst others.

Overseas, his work was produced by the Royal Court Theatre (UK); Fattore K and Napoli Teatro Festival (Italy); La Mama (Australia); Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center (China); Four Arts (Malaysia); and Singapore Rep, Toy Factory, Checkpoint Theatre and TheatreWorks (Singapore). For his plays, he received the London Fringe Award for Best Play, George and Elisabeth Marton Playwriting Award, GLAAD Media Award, Made in America Award, AEA/SAG/AFTRA 2004 Diversity Honor, and Robert Chesley Award. His plays are published by Grove Press.

From 2011 to 2020, Yew was the Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. During his tenure, out of 43 productions, 18 plays received world premieres of which one went to Broadway, six were produced off-Broadway, while others were presented regionally and abroad. He created the Chicago Play Cycle Play and produced eight new plays reflecting and representing the city’s diverse communities. He also established the Directors Inclusion Initiative to develop emerging directors who identify as people of color, disabled, women, gender non-conforming, and/or LGBTQIA+; the Next Generation Fellowship, a professional development program, for our next generation of arts leaders and managers of color; and the Resident Theatre Program, a multi-year residency program for Chicago storefront theatres. He instituted an intentional focus on diverse work that created civic dialogue towards meaningful social change and equity. For his leadership, Yew was awarded the Iris Award for Outstanding Commitment to Connecting Chicago Communities and the Arts, and the Impact Award for Bold and Inclusive Artistic Leadership.

for more on yew

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