This year’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award has been awarded by the Canadian Music Centre to multi-disciplinary artist Emilie Cecilia LeBel, currently a doctoral student at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.
Lebel’s prize is a $5,000 cheque, which she is going to apply to developing a new opera-type work.
Honourable mention — a $1,000 cheque — goes to Monica Pearce, one of the founders of the Toy Piano Composers collective.
Interestingly, both women have studied with Gary Kulesha who, as a teacher and composer-advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, is a substantial force in the city’s new music community.
The award itself is financed by patrons Michael Koerner and Roger Moore.
Both will be honoured at Esprit Orchestra’s season-closing concert at Koerner Hall on March 29.
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LeBel and Pearce approach their art in very different ways.
You can sample some work of LeBel’s in Vimeo, here.
Here is Pascal Meyer performing Smart Aleck, a piece for toy piano by Pearce (her next Toronto collaboration is at the Music Gallery on April 28, with the Array Chamber Ensemble):
John Terauds