FACES & PLACES
The New Mexico Music Commission and the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation honored six music legends from across the state during the 2018 Platinum Music Awards celebration Thursday at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.
The honorees for these second annual awards include Antonia Apodaca, a native of Rociada who now lives in Las Vegas, N.M., and has been an icon of New Mexican folk music for 80 years; Dr. William Clark, a composer, conductor and educator at New Mexico State University; Tom Guralnick, founder and executive director of Outpost Productions Inc. in Albuquerque; Nacha Mendez, a frequent performer in Santa Fe who is a pioneer in the genre of world Latin music; Malcom Yepa of Jemez Pueblo, creator and leader of the Grammy Award-winning Black Eagle Powwow Drum Group; and the Hummingbird Music Camp, a children’s music camp in the Jemez Mountains.
The Platinum Music Awards honor musicians and organizations that have made significant contributions to New Mexico’s musical culture and education. Proceeds from Thursday’s event will benefit the New Mexico Music Commission’s initiatives, including the Music in School programs and ART2ART projects, which focus on bringing music to local youth to help strengthen socialization and team-building skills while educating them on the importance of music.
A book by Santa Fe resident Camilla Kattell, At the Confluence of Two Cultures, William and George Bent Confront Manifest Destiny, has been named by the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group as one of the best indie books of 2018. Kattell’s book is a finalist in the historical nonfiction category in the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the world’s largest not-forprofit book awards program for independent publishers and self-published authors.
Four New Mexico families who own and operate McDonald’s restaurant franchises presented a $20,000 check to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe for the construction of Northern New Mexico’s first Family Room Program through the Ronald McDonald House Charities of New Mexico. The Ronald McDonald Family Room at Christus will provide a place of respite for families while their children are undergoing inpatient treatment.
Bill Harker of Santa Fe recently earned his first national level bridge title at the North American Bridge Championships in Atlanta. The tournament was organized by the American Contract Bridge League. With the win, Harker became a Grand Life Master.
Marsha Bol, a former director of the Museum of International Folk Art, and guest curator Suzanne Seriff are the 2018 recipients of the Michael M. Ames Award for Innovative Museum Anthropology. The pair are being honored for their work from 2010-17 in the founding and developing of the Mark Naylor and Dale Gunn Gallery of Conscience at the folk art museum, and for collaborative projects, exhibitions and documentation created through the Gallery of Conscience.