2014 WINNER & RUNNER-UP: collegiate division

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

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 

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!