The following piece is sponsored content from Azrieli Music Prizes.
Ten years ago, soprano Dr. Sharon Azrieli set out to create something that didn’t yet exist in Canada—an international competition that celebrates contemporary composers, opening doors to their future success. Today, her brainchild, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP), has become the largest competition of its kind in Canada and one of the most substantial in the world.
On Oct. 28, audiences will hear the results of the 2024 competition. Four AMP-winning works will be performed by the renowned l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus, conducted by Andrew Megill, at the AMP Gala Concert. On the program is music inspired by pre-Hispanic Mexican cultures, hymns from the Old Testament, Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages and harmonies divined from the Canadian landscape.
Two of the Azrieli Music Prizes are dedicated specifically to Jewish music. Yair Klartag won the 2024 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music for The Parable of the Palace, which draws from Maimonides’s 12th-century allegory about the limits of logic to explain reality. The commission is awarded to encourage composers to creatively and critically engage with the question, “What is Jewish music?” Josef Bardanashvili’s Light to My Path, a choral fantasy for choir, saxophone, percussion and piano, won the 2024 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. This award is given to a composer who has written the best undiscovered work of Jewish music. Each movement in Bardanashvili’s composition grows from one of the various states of belief—supplication, ecstasy, doubt, gratitude—as found in the Book of Psalms.
The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music is awarded to a Canadian composer to write a new work that engages with the complexities of creating concert music in Canada today. Jordan Nobles, the winner, composed each section of his Kanata for Large Choir in tribute to the Canadian landscape as he was traveling through the land on which it is based.
This year also marks the launch of a new prize. The Azrieli Commission for International Music is offered to a composer who creatively engages with the world’s richly diverse cultural heritage. Simetrías Prehispánicas (“Pre-Hispanic Symmetries”), by composer Juan Trigos, honours the pre-Hispanic culture of his native Mexico, incorporating text by anonymous and major Aztec poets from the 15th century in their original Nahuatl and in Spanish translations. The music continues long after October’s applause dies down. In addition to the gala concert, each composer receives a recording of their prize-winning work released by Analekta, two additional international performances and possible future performances supported by AMP’s Performance Fund. Altogether, AMP has found these to be critical elements to a new work’s future success.
AMP searches for excellent composers—the best in the world—and gives them the resources to imagine new works, elevating and advancing their careers in the process. Through these efforts, many more audiences have come to know, support and enjoy the music of these great living artists, and—through their shared experiences—have fostered greater intercultural understanding on an international scale.
For more information about the Azrieli Music Prizes, visit azrielifoundation.org/amp
Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert, Oct. 28, 2024, 7:30 p.m. Maison symphonique, Montréal. Tickets priced from $30 to $85.
