POLYPHONOS 2007
Winners for the 2006-2007
competition
Each winner receives US$1,000 and a commission
for a 5-minute new work that premiered in The Esoterics’ concert entitled
AMAVAITA in mid-July 2007.
POLYPHONOS 2007 AMERICAN COMPOSER:
Justin Merritt of Northfield, Minnesota
Composer Justin Merritt (b 1975) is a new member of the St. Olaf Music faculty.
He was the youngest-ever winner of the ASCAP Foundation/Rudolph Nissim award in
2001 for Janus mask for orchestra. In addition, he has won many other awards
including the 2004 New Music North selection, 2002 Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
New Music Selection, the 2001 Kuttner String Quartet Competition, and the 2000 Left
Coast Chamber Ensemble Composition Competition Award for The day Florestan murdered
Magister Raro and many other awards.
Other works include music for chamber groups, orchestra, ballet, and opera. He has
worked as composer and musical director in dozens of theater productions, ranging
from Shakespeare to Dada. Justin has studied composition with Samuel Adler, Sven-David
Sandström, Don Freund, Claude Baker, and electronic and computer music with Jeffrey
Hass.
More can be found about Justin on his webpage: www.stolaf.edu/people/merritt.
POLYPHONOS 2007 INTERNATIONAL COMPOSER:
Paul Ayres of Greenford, England
Paul Ayres was born in 1970 in London, studied music at Oxford University, and now
works freelance as a composer & arranger, choral conductor & musical director,
and organist & accompanist. His music usually involves words - solo songs, choral
pieces, music for theatre productions - and he is particularly interested in working
with pre-existing music, from arrangements of folksongs, hymns, jazz standards and
nursery rhymes to 're-compositions' of classical works, as in Purcell's Funeral
sentence, 4A Wreck and Messyah.
Commissions for 2006 include Down and up to you for solo oboe, In the stillness
for choir and string trio, and Artemisia for solo voice. Paul is assistant
director of music at St George's Church Hanover Square, plays piano for improvised
comedy shows and has given many solo organ recitals in the UK, Scandinavia, Europe,
North America and Australia.
Please visit www.paulayres.co.uk
to find out more.
POLYPHONOS 2007 YOUNG COMPOSER:
Abbie Betinis of Minneapolis, Minnesota
Abbie Betinis (b 1980) has written music in a variety of genres, but her greatest
passion is for the human voice. Included in her catalogue of nearly 40 works for
voice are commissioned pieces for Cantus, Dale Warland Singers, The Rose Ensemble,
The Schubert Club, and The Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, among others.
After receiving her BA in music from St Olaf College, where she studied primarily
with Peter Hamlin and Mary Ellen Childs, she was accepted on scholarship to the
European American Musical Alliance composition program, and spent two summers in
Paris as a student of Philip Lasser (The Juilliard School) studying counterpoint
and harmony in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger. Always an enthusiast of language,
Betinis has set texts in English, German, ancient Greek, Irish, Latin, and gibberish,
and is currently working on a song cycle featuring the Norwegian poetry of Rolf
Jacobsen. Her text setting has been called imaginative and sensitive, even while
pushing performers to explore extended vocal techniques such as yodeling, crying,
spitting, whistling, or bird-calling.
Her recent projects investigate ancient Greek love charms and binding spells, African
melorhythm technique, the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle tradition, pre-Christian Gaelic
keening, and early American shape-note singing. Betinis is currently completing
her MA in music composition from the University of Minnesota. She serves as a Composer-in-Residence
for the Schubert Club, and was recently named 2006-07 Composer-in-Residence for
The Rose Ensemble, both in St Paul.
More information can be found on her website: www.abbiebetinis.com.