Azrieli Music to Premiere Four Winning Works At Biennial Gala Concert

The Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre will present its biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) Gala Concert at Maison symphonique de Montréal on October 28, 2024, at 7:30pm ET. The magnificent Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) Chorus and Musicians of the OSM, conducted by Andrew Megill, will premiere the prize-winning works by the four 2024 AMP Laureates: Yair Klartag (the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music); Josef Bardanashvili (Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music); Jordan Nobles (Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music) and Juan Trigos (Azrieli Commission for International Music).

Created in 2014 by Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation, the Azrieli Music Prizes offer opportunities for the discovery, creation, performance and celebration of excellence in music composition. Last November, the four outstanding composers were named the 2024 AMP laureates. The premiere is part of the prize package each AMP Laureate receives - valued at over $200,000 CAD - which also includes a cash award of $50,000 CAD, at least two subsequent international performances and a recording of their piece for commercial release.

Inspired by sweeping landscapes, pre-Hispanic cultures, timeless poetry and medieval philosophy, the AMP Gala Concert will musically transport the audience to new places and introduce new perspectives.

Josef Bardanashvili, recipient of the 2024 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, will premiere Light to My Path a choral fantasy for mixed choir, saxophone, percussion and piano. Each movement grows from one of the various states of belief - supplication, ecstasy, doubt, gratitude - outlined in the Book of Psalms.

Bardanashvili explains, "The Psalms have been an endless source of inspiration over the centuries, and I have been working for years to set the Psalms texts to music. Every person's spiritual condition is brilliantly conveyed in them. Since my work conveys different emotional states of a person, I tried to give each part a different accompaniment, a different colour in its performance."

Yair Klartag, recipient of the 2024 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, will premiere The Parable of the Palace for choir and four double basses. The work draws on Jewish philosopher Maimonides's (1138-1204) famous parable to investigate the limits of logic and reason in explaining reality and the metaphysical.

Klartag says, "The Parable of the Palace appears at the end of the Guide for the Perplexed, an amazing book by Maimonides in which he tried to reconcile Aristotelian logic and reason with the Jewish beliefs. It tells the story of a palace, in which a mysterious king lives. There are different groups of people in different circles around the palace in different proximity to the king. The piece takes from the parable its geometric organization: in the core, there is the irrational - what goes beyond reason - and around it, different circles with varying distances from the irrational. The inner circles are the circles of logic and science. This image of circles surrounding an irrational core inspired the structure of the piece - the music spirals and circles around a very abstract material built from [the sounds of] low double basses and spectral textures hovering in the choir."

Jordan Nobles, recipient of the 2024 Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music, has composed Kanata for large choir, a tribute to the Canadian landscape inspired by Nobles's own travels.

Nobles says, "I wanted to reflect the vastness of Canada's diverse landscapes and the complex histories attached to these places, particularly the Indigenous place names that existed long before colonial settlement. My goal was to create a work that celebrates these original names by using fragments of their sounds, to form a collage of phonemes that evoke the essence of place. Rather than depicting landscapes like mountains or rivers in a literal way, I sought to express the feeling of being in these environments -the stillness, awe, and reverence they inspire. By using shifting textures and layers of sound, I aimed to capture the immensity and intimacy of the Canadian landscape, as well as the personal connection each of us has to the places we call home."

Juan Trigos, recipient of the inaugural 2024 Azrieli Commission for International Music, will premiere Simetrías Prehispánicas, for chorus, amplified flute, trombone, percussion and keyboards. The work pays homage to the cultural history of his native Mexico.

Trigos explains, "In Simetrías Prehispánicas, I used a libretto created by my father, Juan Trigos Sr., in which he employs fragments of original texts in Spanish and Nahuatl by anonymous and known poets of the 15th century, arranging them to create a new work. The music is built from the text and its parts: their sonority, intrinsic rhythm (symmetries and reiterations), punctuation and meaning. The chorus is the protagonist."

Tickets for the concert, $30-$103.50, are on sale now here. The concert will be broadcast for free on Medici TV, Amadeus TV, the Violin Channel and the AMP website.

● Josef Bardanashvili: Light to My Path, North American Premiere (2024 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music)

● Yair Klartag: The Parable of the Palace, World Premiere (2024 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music)

● Jordan Nobles: Kanata, World Premiere (2024 The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music)

● Juan Trigos: Simetrías Prehispánicas [Pre-Hispanic Symmetries], World Premiere (2024 Azrieli Commission for International Music)

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