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.

A long-term pro­ject of mine is mov­ing for­ward this year. Tapes­try New Opera applied for and received fund­ing from Opera​.ca to pro­duce the first act of the opera I have been devel­op­ing with libret­tist, Colleen Mur­phy. We’ll be involved in round­table dis­cus­sions on the opera in Toronto this spring, and I will be com­pos­ing the music for one act of the opera, to be work­shopped at the Banff Cen­tre in August of this year. The act will then be fully pro­duced in the first part of 2010. More details to fol­low as they become available.

I was com­mis­sioned this year by New Works Cal­gary to write a piece for their res­i­dent group, Ensem­ble Res­o­nance. The piece—for soprano, vio­lin, bass clar­inet, and piano—will be pre­mièred in Nov, and I’ll post spe­cific per­for­mance details closer to then, in the Per­for­mances sec­tion. In terms of theme, I’m plan­ning on put­ting to­geth­er a mul­ti­lin­gual text that looks at the nuances of the word kiss in cul­tures from around the world.

I’m pleased and excited to announce that I was declared the win­ner of this year’s annual Young Com­posers Meet­ing in the Nether­lands, hosted by renowned Dutch ensem­ble, ork­est de ereprijs. The jurors chose between 16 pieces that the invited com­posers wrote for the ensem­ble. My piece, Love in the Time of Con­nec­tiv­ity, was a col­lage of approx­i­mately a dozen other pieces, with sources rang­ing from Claude Debussy to Pizzi­cato Five. I’ll be writ­ing another piece for the ensem­ble, to be per­formed in 2010.

Amer­i­can com­poser Char­lie Wil­moth wrote an arti­cle on me and my music, which appeared today in Dusted Mag­a­zine. It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing for me to see how other peo­ple inter­pret what I do. Char­lie does a great job of encap­su­lat­ing sev­eral of the themes that are impor­tant to my work with his insight­ful com­men­tary. Thanks, Charlie!