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The Azrieli Foundation has opened an additional award category for its biennial Azrieli Music Prizes to reward musicians engaging with diverse cultural heritages, raising this year’s number of laureates to four.
The Foundation, which has been funding and operating music programs in Israel and Canada since 1989, established the prizes in 2014. They each grant laureates $50,000 on top of an Orchestre symphonique de Montréal performance and a professional recording of their winning work. Past winners include Brian Current (2016), Avner Dorman (2018), and Keiko Devaux (2020), who later won a Juno Award for her composition Arras.
Juan Trigos is the first musician to win the new Azrieli Commission for International Music by proposing the 20-minute Simetrías Prehispánicas, a rhythmic retelling of 15th-century Aztec poems in both their original Nahuatl language and Spanish translations. In response to the composition, the jury called him “a gifted composer” with “well-orchestrated and directional” music.
The prolific Mexican-American composer already has six operas, four symphonies, and three cantatas under his belt, but he’s best known for collaborating with his father to create DeCachetitoRaspado, or “CheekToStubbledCheek,” and the resultant “Hemofiction” opera genre.
Jordan Nobles won the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music, which seeks to address the complexities of Canadian living. In his proposed Kanata for Large Choir project, he plans to travel the country, composing each part of the work on the landscapes he intends to represent, and making sure to preserve original Indigenous names. The judges called his work “expansive and engaging,” saying he has the power to pull listeners into his sound world with his “unashamedly honest” voice.
Nobles has a history in composition dating back to 1995’s Last Minute for solo piano and Page Two for two pianos. He has since made more than 100 works across more than 20 albums for orchestral and choral groups, chamber ensembles, woodwind and brass, strings, and percussion.
Israeli composer Yair Klartag won the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music with The Parable of the Palace, an 18-minute exploration of Jewish identity and music using choir and double basses. He designed the work to reflect on how logic and reason can explain reality and the metaphysical, drawing on insights from 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides. His music “connects at all levels,” the judges said, “and yet manages to evade our expectations.”
He’s previously been commissioned by Donaueschinger, MATA, and ZeitRäume festivals, as well as the Münchener Orchestra, with dozens of international ensembles performing his works. He won the 2021 Ernst von Siemens Composers Prize for Rationale, which addresses the complexities of reality and the desire to find rational patterns within that complexity.
Israeli-Georgian composer Josef Bardanashvili, the current composer-in-residence for Israel Camerata Jerusalem, won the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. Unlike the commission awards, this prize celebrates a work that has premièred within 75 years without having a history of performances or any official recordings.
Bardanashvili’s Light to My Path draws from conceptions of moral beliefs in the Bible’s Book of Psalms, referring to Psalms 119:105, which talks about making choices based on an understanding of right and wrong. The judges said his beautiful music invites listeners into “his own inner musical and sacred world.”
Following their composition, the four works proposed by the laureates will première at the Azrieli Music Prize Gala Concert on Oct. 28, 2024.
www.azrielifoundation.org
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