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.

Rat­ing: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers pre­sented their final con­cert of the 2009/2010 sea­son tonight, 26 Apr 2010, at the Herbst The­ater in down­town San Fran­cisco. On the pro­gram were pieces by Greek com­poser Mano­lis Manousakis, Amer­i­can Tan Dun, Chi­nese Guo Wen­jing, and French­man Philippe Hurel. This pro­gram was pre­sented coher­ently and engag­ingly, because proper atten­tion was paid not only to select­ing and prepar­ing the music, but also to light­ing, stag­ing, and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects—a rare achieve­ment. (more…)

Recently, I inter­viewed conductor/composer Chris­t­ian Bal­dini for the San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers. Chris­t­ian is con­duct­ing a piece by French com­poser, Philippe Hurel for SFCMP’s upcom­ing con­cert on April 26. Bal­dini is an Argen­tine musi­cian by birth, cur­rently teach­ing con­duct­ing at UC Davis near San Francisco.

Inter­est­ingly enough, in the process of the inter­view, we dis­cov­ered we have some things in com­mon, includ­ing a love of con­tem­po­rary music and new opera!

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.