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| Maestro Vytautas Marijosius |
The American Prize is pleased to announce the winners and runners-up for
The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Maestro Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award, 2014. Awards will be made in two divisions this year: collegiate and community. Here are results in the collegiate division.
Please make us aware of any misprints by emailing: theamericanprize@gmail.com
For nearly thirty five years
Director of Orchestral Activities at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford, Vytautas
Marijosius programmed concerts that were alive in every sense—not
programming for novelty’s sake, nor neglecting the great masters
of the past—but always bringing to the awareness of his students and his
audiences great composers of the current time and potential masters of
the future. I believe he would be pleased in different ways with each of
this year's honorees." —DK
For more about Maestro Marijosius, please visit the companion blog here.
The American Prize in Orchestral Programming
Maestro Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award
—Collegiate Division
The American Prize Winner:
Chris Younghoon Kim, music director
Cornell Orchestras
Ithaca, NY
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| Chris Younghoon Kim |
Passionate about working with young musicians and music education,
Chris Younghooon Kim is the Director of Orchestras at Cornell
University and is an active adjudicator, guest clinician, and
masterclass teacher. The League of American Orchestras and ASCAP have
awarded the first place award for Adventurous Programming of
Contemporary Music to the Cornell Orchestras among all collegiate
orchestras in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. With the Cornell
Orchestras he has led international tours and joint collaborations with
the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto
Rico. Before coming to Cornell, Chris was active in the new music scene
in Boston conducting the Firebird Ensemble and the Kalistos Chamber
Orchestra. Since 1997 he has been the Artistic Director of the new music
ensemble Brave New Works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of America’s most
innovative and progressive ensembles. He has appeared with orchestras in
the United States and abroad, including ensembles such as the Louisiana
Philharmonic Orchestra, Delta Festival Ballet, Symphoria, based in
Syracuse, NY, Divertimento Ensemble of Milan, Italy. He has also
appeared in music festivals such as, Kinhaven Music Center, Skaneateles
Music Festival, International Bartok Festival in Szaombarthely, Hungary,
among others. He is an active promoter of music of our time, and has
collaborated with dozens of composers, and commissioned and premiered
numerous new works. He was recently chosen to be one of three young
conductors to appear at the Ensemble Moderne Academy in Innsbruck,
Austria being mentored by members of Ensemble Moderne at the 2012
Klangspuren new music festival. He has also been chosen as the first
wave of conductors to take part in the College Orchestra Directors
Association’s Ibermusicas initiative in 2014, and will guest conduct
Orquesta Sinfónica del Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina.
2nd Place:
Tian Hui Ng, music director
Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra
South Hadley MA
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| Tian Hui Ng |
Ng Tian Hui is the Director of Orchestral Activities
and Lecturer in Music at Mount Holyoke College, where he conducts the
Orchestra, and teaches courses in conducting, musicianship and
performance practice.
An enthusiastic advocate of new music, he
has commissioned and conducted premieres of music by Colin Britt, Curt
Cacioppo, Zhangyi Chen, Reena Esmail, Americ Goh, Robert Honstein, Emily
Koh, Joan Tower and Wong Kah Chun. He is particularly proud of the
commission “Ariadne’s Lament” by Zhangyi Chen which won the Eric
Whitacre Prize given away by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Eric
Whitacre Singers.
Known for his inter-disciplinary
work, Mr.Ng’s most recent creation was entitled “Midwinter Dreams” in
which he served as both director and conductor. The production utilized
the complete Incidental Music to a Midsummer Night’s Dream by
Mendelssohn in a reshuffled order, intermixed with a new commission by
Robert Honstein. The music created an emotional contour, onto which
award winning choreographers Terese Freedman and Dahlia Nayar created
dance in combination with performance art and paper sculptures by Rie
Hachiyanagi, to explore the dreams of the local community.
Mr
Ng received the Bachelor of Music from the University of Birmingham, UK
where he studied composition with Vic Hoyland and orchestral conducting
with Andrew Constantine. He holds a Master of Music degree in Choral
Conducting from the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of
Sacred Music, with Marguerite Brooks, Simon Carrington, Jeffrey Douma
and Masaaki Suzuki. He has participated in conducting master classes
with Leon Fleisher, Simon Halsey, Paul Hillier, Peter Jaffe, Nicholas
McGegan, Gustav Meier, Maurice Peress, Donald Portnoy, Helmuth Rilling,
Dale Warland, and Paul Vermel among others.
In 2013-14,
Mr. Ng looks forward to a season of music including the premiere of a
new opera by Mary D. Watkins titled “Dark River”, a new performance
edition of “A Folk Symphony” by Fela Sowande, the father of Nigerian
Western Classical Music, paired with new commissions by Hoh Chung Shih
and David Sanford, exploring the connections between Music and ethnic
diasporas.
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Congratulations!
