It’s welcome news when young Bostonian musicians receive national recognition, and especially pleasing to this writer when such musical citizens also have connections with the Intelligencer. While he has been a doctoral student, a freshly minted PhD., sitting on the advisory board of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, on Juventas New Music Ensemble’s board of directors, and a member of Composers in Red Sneakers, Peter Van Zandt Lane also had the dedication to write 51 reviews for this journal. We salute him on winning second prize for his ballet HackPolitik [reviewed here] from the American Prize Competition.
The American Prize competition, 2014, recognized HackPolitik, a ballet in two acts for chamber ensemble and electronics in the professional theater works division from applications reviewed this summer from all across the United States. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts. Moreon the story is here.
Peter, whose website is here, provided an autobiographical sketch:
Peter Van Zandt Lane (b. 1985) is an American composer of instrumental and electroacoustic music. His works have been critically praised for their “appeal to musicians and audiences, no matter their personal musical aesthetic” (Asymmetry Music Magazine). His recent full-length ballet, HackPolitik, was hailed as “angular, jarring, and sophisticated…very compelling…ballet needs live music, and this one offered it at the highest level.” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Peter has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has received commissions from the Barlow Endowment, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and Dinosaur Annex, among others. His music has been played by top-tier ensembles such as the Cleveland Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and the Lydian String Quartet. Peter holds degrees from Brandeis University and the University of Miami. He studied composition with Melinda Wagner, Eric Chasalow, and David Rakowski, and bassoon with Luciano Magnanini.
And one more from the home team:
The American Prize in Composition—Chorus (student division)
The American Prize winner:
SAUNDER CHOI selected works
Cambridge MA
Saunder Choi
Saunder Choi (b. 1988) is an emerging Filipino composer who has written a wide variety of works, from contemporary classical instrumental, vocal and choral works to jazz charts and popular music arrangements. His works have been performed in various concert halls, including Merkin Hall at the Lincoln Center in NY, the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the world famous Teatro Colon opera house in Buenos Aires, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and in different international goodwill tours and concerts, such as the Philippine Madrigal Singers’ 2009 UNESCO Artists for Peace awarding ceremony, the 2010 Guido d’Arezzo Polifonico Choral Competition in Italy, the 2011 World Choral Symposium in Argentina, the 2012 World Choir Games in Ohio and the 2013 Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium. Select works have also been performed, recorded and read by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, the Philippine Madrigal Singers, the Peninsula Women’s Chorus, the Salt Lake Choral Artists, the Kalistos Chamber Orchestra and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium Chorus.
In 2007, his arrangement of Malinac Lay Labi was chosen as one of the 15 winning, published entries in Awiting Bayan para sa Korong Pilipino, a national Philippine folksong choral arranging competition sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and Arts in the Philippines. He was a 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award finalist and received the 2013 Leroy Southers Award from the Berklee College of Music Composition Department. He was also one of the composers selected for the 1st Young Composers Initiative call for scores by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.
Born in Manila, Philippines, he holds a Bachelor of Arts major in Communication Arts degree from the De La Salle University-Manila and a Bachelor of Music in Composition, minor in Conducting, summa cum laude, from the Berklee College of Music. He is currently pursuing his Master of Music in Composition at the USC Thornton School of Music, studying with Donald Crockett. He studied composition with Andrew List, Marti Epstein and Vuk Kulenovic, and had master classes with Stephen Hartke, Chen Yi, Robert Kyr and Adam Gorb. He studied conducting with Isaiah Jackson and Francisco Noya. His works are published with Santa Barbara Music Publishing and Earthsongs.
Among judges’ comments: “…his work is thoughtful, well crafted, stylistically interesting and full of joyousness.”
[A former member of the choir at First Church in Boston, Saunder Choi is now a graduate student at the USC Thornton School of Music.]
Comment by Paul Cienniwa — September 26, 2014 at 4:22 pm