News Releases - 2005
Linda Catlin Smith wins 2005 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music
Ottawa, December 14, 2005 – The Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Music Centre and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada announced today that Garland by Toronto composer Linda Catlin Smith is the winner of the 2005 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. Garland is a contemporary work for baroque period instruments, commissioned by the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and premiered in 2004.
Awarded annually, the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music is designed to encourage the creation of new Canadian chamber music and to foster its performance by Canadian chamber groups. The $7,500 prize was established in 1978 by the Right Honourable Jules Léger, then Governor General of Canada.
The competition for the prize is administered by the Canadian Music Centre. The Canada Council funds the award, selects the peer assessment committee and organizes the presentation ceremony. The winning work will be broadcast nationally by CBC Radio Two and Espace musique, Radio-Canada's music radio network.
The prize will be presented at the Tafelmusik concert, which will include a performance of Garland, on Saturday, January 21 at 8 p.m., at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor Street West in Toronto. The concert will be broadcast on CBC Radio Two’s In Performance on Tuesday, February 21 at 8 p.m., and Garland will be broadcast on Two New Hours as well as Espace Musique on Sunday, February 26, at 10 p.m.
The members of the peer assessment committee for the 2005 Jules Léger Prize were composer John Burke (Richmond, BC), instrumentalist Eve Egoyan (Toronto) and composer Michael Oesterle (Montreal). Mr. Burke and Mr. Oesterle are both previous winners of the Jules Léger Prize. The committee was a “blind jury” which evaluated the works without knowing the names of the composers.
In awarding the prize to Ms. Smith, the jury said: “Garland pushes not only the boundaries of chamber music, but it concurrently challenges the notion of contemporary creation in that the work was written for baroque period instruments. The composition has an immediate beauty. This ‘jewel’ has been exquisitely handled with intuitive and unusual compositional competence, creating a colouristically perfect and convincing musical offering. This brief work appears modest in scope but reveals itself profound in spirit – capturing us again and again.”
The jury described the process as “a very rewarding experience, due to the large number of outstanding works of quality.”
“We were heartened, in listening to the range of work, that the Canadian compositional community generates such a diversity of genres. Many works pushed the boundaries of chamber music,” the jury said. The jury made a special mention of two other works submitted for the Jules Léger Prize: Chants Convergents by Gilles Tremblay (Montreal) and Smaller Knives by Geof Holbrook (Montreal).
The jury particularly commended Chants Convergents by Gilles Tremblay as a “masterful work of great depth and wonder; a coherent world that balances contemplative and ecstatic, continuity and text, creating a truly mystical space.”
The jury praised Smaller Knives by Geof Holbrook for its “light and transparent texture, never proclaiming or heavy but rather complete control of its forces. A solid work by a young composer.”
In addition to Mr. Burke and Mr. Oesterle, previous winners of the Jules Léger Prize include Patrick Saint-Denis, Éric Morin, Yannick Plamondon, Chris Paul Harman, André Ristic, Alexina Louie, Omar Daniel, Christos Hatzis, Peter Paul Koprowski, Bruce Mather, John Rea, Donald Steven, Michael Colgrass, Denys Bouliane, Michel Longtin, Brian Cherney, John Hawkins, Walter Boudreau, Serge Garant and R. Murray Schafer.
Linda Catlin Smith
Linda Catlin Smith was born in New York in 1957, and has lived in Toronto since 1981. Her works have been performed by many ensembles and soloists, including Arraymusic, Vancouver New Music, SMCQ, Colin Tilney, Louis Goldstein, Tafelmusik, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Penderecki Quartet, Bozzini Quartet, Duke Trio, CBC Radio Orchestra and the Banff Centre, as well as by ensembles and soloists abroad and in the United States. Her opera, Facing South, was premiered by Tapestry New Opera (libretto by Don Hannah) in April of 2003. Her works can be found on recordings by Arraymsic, Barbara Pritchard, Continuum, Evergreen Club Gamelan, Les Coucous Bénévoles and Joseph Petric; many of these are available on the Artifact Music label, which also released her solo CD, Memory Forms.
Ms. Smith began her training in composition with Allen Shawn in New York, and continued her studies at the University of Victoria with Rudolf Komorous, Martin Bartlett, John Celona, Michael Longton, and Jo Kondo; she attended, by invitation, some of Morton Feldman’s composition/orchestration classes in Buffalo. She studied piano with Nurit Tilles and Katherine Solose, and harpsichord with Erich Schwandt.
Ms. Smith’s work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Laidlaw Foundation. In 1997 she received the K.M. Hunter Foundation Award and in 2003 she was awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. She has created many of her works in residency at the Leighton Studios of the Banff Centre. In addition to her work as an independent composer, she was Artistic Director of Arraymusic from 1988 to 1993. Since 1992, she has been a member of the multidisciplinary performance collective, URGE. She is currently a member of the composition faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University.
General information
The Canada Council for the Arts, in addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts in Canada, administers and awards prizes and fellowships to over 100 artists and scholars annually. These include the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prizes, the Killam Prizes and the Killam Research Fellowships. Other music awards include the Sylva Gelber Foundation Award, the Virginia Parker Prize, the Bernard Diamant Prize, and loans of fine stringed instruments through the Musical Instrument Bank. For more information about these awards, including nomination procedures, contact Janet Riedel Pigott, Acting Director of Endowments and Prizes, at (613) 566-4414 or 1 800 263 5588, ext. 5041.
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir
Adrienne Lloyd
Publicity and Publications Manager
(416) 964-9562, ext. 237
alloyd@tafemusik.org