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.

]]> http://aarongervais.com/news/ascap-foundation-2010-morton-gould-young-composer-awards/feed/ 0 http://aarongervais.com/news/no-extra-notespodcast-interview/ http://aarongervais.com/news/no-extra-notespodcast-interview/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:26:41 +0000 Aaron Gervais http://aarongervais.com/?p=1073

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 recycled80slive.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.