The cul­mi­na­tion of a lot of plan­ning, eval­u­at­ing, and work, I’ve now got a new look for my web­site. There are still a few minor tweaks to be made, but the major­ity is there. Now that this project is com­pleted, stay tuned for updated con­tent that is on the way in the next month or so.

Now that the JUNO Awards are over for the year, I can announce that I was invited to be a judge for the 2010 edi­tion of Canada’s music indus­try awards. As such, I ranked record­ings sub­mit­ted for the “Clas­si­cal Com­po­si­tion of the Year” cat­e­gory, par­tic­i­pat­ing in two rounds of vot­ing, first to select the five final­ists, and then to choose the win­ner. This year, Toronto-based com­poser Mar­jan Mozetich won the award. Mozetich is the co-founder of ARRAYMUSIC and he won for his record­ing of Lament in the Tram­pled Gar­den by the Pen­derecki Quar­tet.

I’m please to announce that I was awarded hon­or­able men­tion in this year’s Mor­ton Gould Awards. Founded in 1979, the awards are open to com­posers under 30 who are Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, per­ma­nent res­i­dents, or for­eign stu­dents in the US. This year, there were 730 entries, mak­ing the Mor­ton Gould Awards extremely competitive.

The piece I sub­mit­ted was Kiss Around the World, com­mis­sioned by New Works Cal­gary for Ensem­ble Res­o­nance in 2009.

The press release for the awards lists the judges and other recip­i­ents. Com­poser Car­olyn Chen, who stud­ied at UCSD with me, was also awarded hon­or­able mention.

Com­poser Richard Zarou recently did a pod­cast inter­view with me, for his blog, No Extra Notes. No Extra Notes is a weekly pod­cast about up-and-coming com­posers. The inter­view deals with why I write music, some of the inspi­ra­tions behind my work, and a range of other top­ics. It also fea­tures two recent pieces of mine, Sen­sa­tional Rev­o­lu­tion in Med­i­cine and Kiss Around the World.

The New Year is off to a busy start, with sev­eral pre­mières com­ing up and a vari­ety of new projects in the works.

• On 25 Jan 2010, Brazilian-Canadian pianist Luciane Car­dassi pre­mières my new piece, Hockey Story, on the Hap­pen­ing 2010 New Music Fes­ti­val in Cal­gary. This piece, on the theme of hockey, is for speak­ing pianist and electronics.
• Shortly there­after, on 19 Feb 2010, I’m off to Hol­land for the pre­mière of a piece com­mis­sioned by ork­est de erepris. This piece, Elegy of Oth­ers, is a col­lage, with quo­ta­tions rang­ing from Vivaldi to R.E.M. and Anto­nio Car­los Jobim.
• Finally, Feb­ru­ary wraps up with the orches­tral read­ing (28 Feb 2010) of a sec­tion from the opera, Oksana G., that libret­tist Colleen Mur­phy and I have been devel­op­ing for sev­eral years. We con­ducted a suc­cess­ful piano-vocal work­shop with Tapes­try New Opera at the Banff Cen­tre in August and now the Cana­dian Opera Com­pany is doing a read­ing, as part of the long-term devel­op­ment process for this piece.

These events mark the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­eral projects from 2009. Sev­eral other projects, includ­ing some uncon­ven­tional ensem­bles and the use of unusual media, are under devel­op­ment for 2010. Addi­tional details will be posted when available.

Classical-music-themed social net­work Dilet­tante has selected me as one of three final­ists for their inau­gural Dig­i­tal Composer-in-Residence com­pe­ti­tion (press release). This is a people’s choice award, so I would encour­age you to vote for me! As part of the com­pe­ti­tion, the Lon­don Sin­foni­etta has recorded my sub­mit­ted piece, Sen­sa­tional Rev­o­lu­tion in Med­i­cine, which they will also per­form live at a con­cert on 5 Nov at London’s Wilton’s Music Hall. You can get tick­ets for the con­cert here. Also Dilet­tante’s house blog will fea­ture inter­view pod­casts of the final­ists, as well as other goodies.

Cana­dian Trio Toca Loca recently launched their debut album, which includes a fan­tas­tic ver­sion of my piece, Cul­ture no.2 (or, Shoot Like a Film Star), which they com­mis­sioned in 2007. The album is avail­able through Cen­ter­Discs and can also be ordered through iTunes and Ama­zon. Also check out details about their CD launches in Berlin and Vancouver.

I’m quite happy to announce that I won another SOCAN Award this year, my fifth so far (press release). I was awarded first prize in the vocal cat­e­gory for Sen­sa­tional Rev­o­lu­tion in Med­i­cine, a piece for soprano and speak­ing pianist, pre­mièred by Xin Wang and Gre­gory Oh at the SHIFT Fes­ti­val in Toronto this year. For those not famil­iar, the SOCAN Awards is the major Cana­dian com­pe­ti­tion for com­posers under 30, and I’ve been for­tu­nate to have received sev­eral awards, begin­ning in 2004. Radio-Canada’s Michel Char­ron also inter­viewed me about the prize this year.

Reg­u­lar read­ers will recall the ‘80s col­lage piece I was work­ing on in 2008. I’ve since put together a pro­mo­tional web­site for the pro­ject, and have started plan­ning a West Coast tour of North Amer­ica, ten­ta­tively slot­ted for late 2010. More infor­ma­tion as it be­comes avail­able, posted here and at recy​cled80s​live​.com.

I was asked to be the Com­po­si­tion Fel­low for this year’s Cham­ber Music Con­fer­ence and Com­posers’ Forum of the East in Ben­ning­ton, Ver­mont this Jul. As the Com­po­si­tion Fel­low, I will be work­ing with com­posers Lisa Bielawa and Don­ald Crock­ett, take part in rehearsals, and pre­mière a new adap­ta­tion of one of my works, to be writ­ten for the con­fer­ence participants.