The jury for this competition is made up?of two Canadian composers, one international composer, a distinguished member of the musical community, an internationally recognized performer, and a member of the concert-going public with a passion for musical creation.
Claire Marchand
Claire Marchand studied management of cultural organizations at HEC/Université de Montréal and subsequently worked as music officer at the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). Since 2015, she is Executive Director and artistic director of the Canadian Music Centre in Quebec based in Montreal. Her role is to establish links between composers, performers and the public in order to increase awareness of Canadian music, specifically that of some 300 composers from Quebec. Ms. Marchand is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique de Montréal (guidance commitee), and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM) at Université de Montréal.
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As a flautist, Claire Marchand has won critical acclaim for her "subtlety of color, technique and virtuosity", and is the recipient of a Prix Opus award in Québec for best concert of the year in contemporary music. She has worked with many composers and premiered numerous works for f lute. She can be heard, in a recording of 20th century music for solo flute (ATMA and NAXOS), and with Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (ATMA). She also recorded the Mozart concerto for flute and harp with Valérie Milot, Les Violons du Roy and Bernard Labadie (ANALEKTA).
Dorothy Chang
Described as “evocative and kaleidoscopic” and “beautiful and gripping”, the music of composer Dorothy Chang reflects an eclectic mix of musical influences ranging from popular and folk music to elements of traditional Chinese music. Many of her works are inspired by place, time, memory, and the question of cultural identity.
Dorothy’s catalog includes over eighty compositions with a particular interest in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration, including works for mixed Chinese and Western ensembles as well those involving staging, movement, theatre and dance. Her interest in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration has led to some of her favourite projects including: a radio play adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s White Wines for four vocalists and speaking percussionist; a double concerto Gateways for PEP (Piano and Erhu Project), Flying White (飞白) for mixed Chinese and Western ensemble with Wen Wei Dance; and Shelter, a collaboration with harpist Janelle Nadeau and filmmaker Sean Shaul. Her most recent orchestral work, Precipice, was commissioned by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and performed as part of the orchestra’s 2023 US tour to the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.
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Dorothy’s music has been featured in concerts and festivals across North America and abroad, with performances by the Albany Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Vancouver Island Symphony and Victoria Symphony Orchestras, as well as by chamber ensembles including the Chai Found Music Workshop (Taiwan), Chicago Saxophone Quartet, Collage New Music, eighth blackbird, the Emily Carr String Quartet, Land’s End Ensemble, Music from China, the Orchid Ensemble, PhoeNX Ensemble, the Smith Quartet, Sound of Dragon, Soundstreams, Standing Wave, Turning Point Ensemble, and the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra, among others.
Awards and honours that Dorothy has received include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the International Alliance for Women in Music, the National Society of Arts and Letters, Meet the Composer and the Jacob Druckman Orchestra Prize from the Aspen Music Festival. She has received commissions from the Canada Council of the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Barlow Endowment, Chamber Music America, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. For the 2003-04 and 2005-08 seasons, Dorothy held a Music Alive composer residency with the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In 2008 she was awarded the inaugural commission from the Women’s Philharmonic Commissioning Project of Meet the Composer for a new orchestral work, Strange Air, which was premiered at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music by Marin Alsop and the festival orchestra. Her work Beyond Shadows was nominated as “Best Classical Composition” for the 2015 Western Canadian Music Awards. Her flute concerto Flight received a 2022 JUNO Award nomination for Best Classical Composition. That same year, she won the Western Canadian Music Awards “Classical Composer of the Year”, and was nominated again in the same category in 2024.
Born in Winfield, Illinois, Dorothy began her music studies on piano at age six and began composing at the age of fourteen. She received degrees in composition from the University of Michigan (B.M., M.M.) and the Indiana University School of Music (D.M). A dedicated educator, she has served on the music faculty at Indiana State University, and since 2003 has been a Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Janelle Fung
Canadian pianist Janelle Fung has performed in concert from coast to coast in Canada, including tours with Prairie Debut and Jeunesses Musicales du Canada. Winner of the “Artist of the Year” award from the BC Touring Council in 2014, her international concerts have taken her to over twenty countries on five continents. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Fung has appeared in concert with the Ying Quartet, New York Woodwind Quintet, Mark Fewer and Matt Haimovitz.
Ms. Fung has been a prize winner in numerous national and international competitions, including the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, the Concours OSM-Standard Life, and the Canadian Music Competition. She has been featured on radio stations nationally and internationally including CBC, Radio-Canada, Classical 96.3 FM, NPR, and Radio France.
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Ms. Fung’s interest in opera have led to collaborations with Nicole Cabell, Teresa Stratas, and William Warfield. She has toured twice as Touring Artistic Director for opera productions presented by Jeunesses Musicales du Canada and is currently on faculty at Highlands Opera Studio.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Janelle Fung began her piano studies at the age of four. Her principal teachers have included Nelita True, Julian Martin and Marc Durand. Ms. Fung received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music, her Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School and her doctorate from l’Université de Montréal. She is grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts and Yamaha Artists for their continued support.
Jean Lesage,
Jury Chair
Jean Lesage pursued his musical training with Gilles Tremblay for composition and analysis, Micheline Coulombe St-Marcoux and Yves Daoust for electronic music, Clermont Pépin for orchestration, and with Mireille Lagacé for harpsichord.
Jean Lesage is very active on the Montréal music scene: he has been an advisory member of the Association pour la Création et la Recherche ?lectroacoustique du Québec, a program coordinator for the Société des Concerts Alternatifs du Québec, and between 1990 and 2011, a member of the artistic committee of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec.
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From 1987 to 1995, he was also a reporter for the program Musique actuelle, broadcast on Radio-Canada’s FM radio. For the same network, in the summer of 1996, he produced and hosted Musique du Québec, a series of 12 programs on Québec’s musical modernism. He has been on the editorial board of Circuit, Contemporary Music Journal from 2005 to 2013.
From 1995 to 2009 Jean Lesage has been regularly invited as a composer and a teacher at the Rencontre internationale de musique nouvelle at Domaine Forget.
He has been teaching at the Orford Summer Academy since 2013.
In 1997 and in 2008, he has been guest editorial director for Circuit, for special issues on Montreal composers and on the music of Claude Vivier.
Since 1999, Jean Lesage has been teaching composition, music analysis and orchestration at the Schulich School of Music of 平特五不中.
Katherine Balch
Called “spellbinding” (Seen and Heard International) with “glow and poise and electric tension” (The Daily Telegraph), the music of composer Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination, discovery, and textural lyricism. Inspired by the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes, she has been described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, and the symphony orchestras of Pittsburg, Dallas, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Fontainebleau Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in France, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. Her work has been presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.
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Winner of the 2020-2021 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Katherine was nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award. She has also been honored by ASCAP, BMI, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.
Katherine was the 2017-2020 composer-in-residence for the California Symphony, where she was lauded by the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She has also served as composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Inc.
Deeply committed to pursuing inclusive, engaging pedagogical practices that empower students through creative music-making, Katherine is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music. She has previously served on the faculties of Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute, Mannes School of Music, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the Walden School and Bard College-Conservatory Prep. Katherine holds a D.M.A. from Columbia University and an M.M. from Yale School of Music. She counts among her mentors George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Marcos Balter, Zosha Di Castri, Aaron Kernis, Chris Theofanidis, and David Lang.
Katherine documents her lived experiences on the page, with each composition serving as a diary of what has captivated her curiosity. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, or hanging out with her feline sidekick, Zarathustra and her husband, fellow composer Ted Moore.
Scott Tresham
Scott Tresham is driven by a deep passion for the creative arts, their unique capacity for human expression and storytelling, and a firm belief in their power to connect and transform individuals and communities. Leveraging over three decades of experience in classical music (as a composer, musician, broadcaster, artistic director, creative producer, curator/programmer and arts administrator), he is a thoughtful leader and generous collaborator who inspires with intelligence and heart to create meaningful and unforgettable experiences. Where others see impossibility, Scott’s signature is an exceptional talent for uncovering potential, and transforming the improbable into the inevitable.
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Most recently, as Associate Director of Music Programming at the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with Rafael Payare, Scott contributed to the conception and realisation of this world-class orchestra’s concert activities for three seasons, as well as rebuilding and leading the team responsible for guest soloists and conductors, contemporary music and commissions, artistic partnerships, special programming, chamber music, auditions, and the OSM chorus. Other career highlights include six years as Director of Artistic Operations and Strategy at the Concours musical international de Montréal where he emerged as a key leader in the competition’s evolution and unprecedented growth, and a 15-year tenure at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where he produced countless concert recordings, live events and broadcasts for local, national, and international audiences. He was also the founder and Artistic Director of the Jusqu’aux oreilles new music festival, which ran from 1999 to 2009 in Montreal.
Originally from Ottawa, Scott studied music at the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia, and holds a Master’s degree in composition from King’s College London (University of London). He is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and an active member of the Union des artistes. Also an avid rower, Scott is the former President and a current board member of the Montreal Rowing Club.
Vivian Fung
JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.” Her newest compositions run the gamut from the orchestral piece , a ROCO commission reflecting on San Francisco’s Lunar New Year festivities; to the daring , a powerhouse work for two pianos and two percussion; to her , a challenging work commissioned and premiered by Vancouver Symphony Principal Flutist Christie Reside.
Current and upcoming presentations of Fung’s work include the National Repertory Orchestra’s performance of , her critically acclaimed elegy for the pandemic. Fung’s composition , inspired by Chicago’s Aqua Tower, is on the program for the city’s annual Grant Park Music Festival.
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Fung’s 2023/24 season officially begins with the world premiere of a work commissioned by the “” project. A portrait album of her works featuring the Jasper String Quartet is due for release on Sono Luminus in October 2023. The world premiere of “” is set for May 2024 at the Kaufman Center in New York City.
Fung is currently at work on a new project about identity with soprano Andrea Nunez and Royce Vavrek, percussion works for Network for New Music and , and a commission by Cape Cod Chamber Music Society.
Recent highlights include the digital world premiere of two operatic scenes based on Fung’s oral family history in Cambodia with librettist Royce Vavrek. In other works, Fung has taken inspiration from travels in China, Vietnam, Spain, Indonesia and beyond.
She has received numerous awards and grants from institutions including ASCAP, the Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her compositions have been performed by dozens of major ensembles worldwide. Recordings of her work have been released on the Naxos Canadian Classics, Telarc, ?edille, Innova, Signpost and ?edille Records labels.
Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. She currently lives in California. Learn more at .