A Composition Competition for a Work for Harp and Chamber Orchestra.
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Álvarez Chamber Orchestra is pleased to announce
“The Song of Britomartis” by Molly Kien the winning entry
of the 2009 composition competition Plucked from Nowhere. The
music heard accompanying this page can also be played by
clicking here.
Molly Kien
originates from Milwaukee in the USA and currently lives and works
in Stockholm. She receives a prize of £1,000 and her work
will be performed by the Álvarez Chamber Orchestra at its
forthcoming season, also entitled “Plucked from Nowhere”, the first concert of the festival
scheduled for November 13th, 2010 at LSO St Luke's.
Other works in the season will
include pieces by members of the
reading panel, and three world premieres all written especially
for the ÁCO: Harp Concerto by Bogusław
Schaeffer, Spiders' Web by Paul Patterson, commissioned with
funds from the PRS for Music Foundation, and the Triple Goddess
by Geoffrey Álvarez. A
separate prize of Sibelius
6 music notation
software, which has been donated by Avid, was awarded to Jee Soo
Shin for her quirky miniature “Ha-rpy”. Jee Soo Shin is
from Seoul but is currently studying at the University of
Southampton and also teaches at the University of
Oxford.
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The competition was open to composers of any age and nationality. There was no specification as to the length or nature of the work, or the number of works submitted. Thus the competition attracted a wide range of entries across all age groups from 16 to 78 from many countries including the UK, Germany, Russia and South Africa. Dr Geoffrey Álvarez, Artistic Director and Conductor of the ÁCO, expressed satisfaction with the outcome, “The reading panel was encouraged by the number of scores we received, especially from abroad, with professional, semi-professional and amateur entrants submitting works spanning a huge stylistic range from lyrical modality to free atonality. All our entrants will receive feedback on their entries based on the judges’ comments.” Due to the success of the competition the ÁCO plans to make this an annual event in their programme.
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The Prizewinners
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| First Prize
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| On 19th March, 2010, in the Schott Recital Room, London, acclaimed film and opera director Tony Palmer presented American composer Molly Kien with the Plucked from Nowhere Award. | |
 Molly Kien was born in 1979 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
She has a Bachelor’s Degree in composition from Indiana University
where she studied with Sven-David Sandström. This led to further
studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where she
received a Master’s Degree in spring 2009. She has written for
groups such as Nordic Fusion 6, the Swedish Radio Choir and Musica
Vitae String orchestra. This autumn (2009) she is working with the
Swedish Chamber Orchestra. “The Song of
Britomartis” was written for Laura Stephenson, principal harpist
with Stockholm’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Swedish new
music chamber ensemble, KammerensembleN: they can be heard on the
excerpt posted on this webpage. The piece was inspired by a rug
outside the auditorium of the Stockholm Concert Hall designed by
Swedish artist Isaac Grünewald which draws in turn
from the rich wellsprings of matrilineal Minoan mythology, in
particular the Goddess Britomartis. The goddess is sometimes portrayed as
a mermaid who appears in “The Song of Britomartis” as the harp,
glimpsed tantalisingly fleetingly in isolated diatonic white notes
at first before gradually establishing herself as the principal
character of the work with a cadenza of glissandi of glistening,
iridescent scales coloured with flattened G’s and
A’s. | |
| The Sibelius 6 Prize | |
  At the same occasion, Daniel Spreadbury,
Head of Research and Development of Sibelius Software,
Avid, shown on the left, presented Jee Soo Shin with a full,
boxed, professional copy of Sibelius 6, on the right with
composer Stephen Montague at the prize-giving.
Jee Soo Shin was born in 1981 in Seoul. During her
studies in composition with Chungiek Chang at Seoul National
University, many of her works were performed in South Korea. Her
studies concluded at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg
winning the Bernhard-Paumgartner Medal for the best graduate of
the year. Her work has been presented at Darmstadt Ferienkurse and
by groups such as Ensemble ACROBAT, and vocal ensemble EXAUDI.
She currently studies composition with Michael Finnissy at the
University of Southampton and teaches at the University of
Oxford. The title “Ha-rpy” playfully takes the note H on a journey
from piccolo via the violins to conclude on the harp. What happens
at the same time on the other instruments is motivically jittery,
quirky and characterful; a miniature Paul Klee.
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| The Jury | |
| The reading panel consisted of – from left to right in the photograph below - composer Diana Burrell, formerly Director of the Spitalfields Festival, now holding a Fellowship at the Royal Academy; composer Paul Patterson, recently awarded the highest Polish award, the Gold Medal, for his work promoting Polish music, currently Manson Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and composer in residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain; Geoffrey Álvarez, composer and conductor of the Álvarez Chamber Orchestra; Simon Campion, music publisher; Elżbieta Baklarz, virtuoso harpist with the Polish Orkestra Sinfonietta Cracovia and International Liaison Officer for the ÁCO; and Roxanna Panufnik, a composer with a thorough working knowledge of the harp. | |
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The Competitors
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All the composers who entered the competition were
invited to come to the award ceremony, and among those who
responded were two significant composers with flourishing
careers. Alastair Greig, currently Senior Lecturer at Roehampton University, details
here,
wrote after he had attended the presentation:
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Nancy Van de Vate, a well established and respected
American composer living in Austria, another of our most
distinguished finalists, was unable to attend the ceremony as
she was recording in Vienna at the time where she also teaches
at the Institute for European Studies. She wrote of the
competition:
To find out more about this important artist, click here. | |
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Details of the next ÁCO prize, Free Style, are available here.
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In the 2008 season celebrating the music of England and Poland, Elżbieta Baklarz returned to work with The Álvarez Chamber Orchestra, bringing musicians from the Sinfonietta Cracovia, already heard to great acclaim at the launch of the season at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in January. |
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The Álvarez Chamber Orchestra is a Registered Charity No. 1120668 and a Company Limited by Guarantee No. 6227728. Registered in England and Wales. Registered Office: 5 Rensburg Road London E17 7HL Telephone: +44 208 521 7642 Mobile: 07710 427923 Email: geoffrey.alvarez@fiveseasonsmusic.co.uk Website: http://freespace.virgin.net/geoffrey.alvarez/alvarezorchestra.htm Trustees: Timothy Brailsford, Phillip Costen, Trevor Huntley Associate Adviser: Simon Campion Solicitor: Peter Korn, Interchange Legal Advisory Service. Accountants: Findlay, Wetherfield, Scott and Co. Photography: Phillip Costen and Ken Bailey Logo design: Geoffrey Alvarez and Ken Bailey |
