Schulich alum Brian Current, BMus’96, wins the first Azrieli Commissioning Competition in Jewish Music
The Azrieli Music Project is proud to announce that McGill graduate Brian Current is the winner of the inaugural Azrieli Commissioning Competition, a $50,000 prize for a new work of orchestral Jewish Music. Two new prizes of $50,000 each were established this year by the Azrieli Foundation in order to celebrate, foster and create opportunities for the performance of high quality new orchestral music on a Jewish theme or subject. Current’s new will be performed by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Maestro Kent Nagano at The Azrieli Music Project Gala Concert at Maison symphonique de Montréal on October 19, 2016.
Brian Current’s The Seven Heavenly Halls will be scored for choir, orchestra and solo tenor. Current was inspired by the Zohar, the foundational book of the Kabbalah and the most mysterious of Jewish mystical texts. “While reading through the Zohar, I immediately heard turbulent and gestural music full of orchestral colours,” says Current, “Even more inspiring was the reference to the Sefer Hekalot or the Seven Heavenly Halls, a series of ecstatic stages where each vision is marked by a different colour.” The new work will trace a mystical progression through seven ecstatic states, each described by a musical colour. Current will add brighter and brighter overtones to the orchestration, reaching a climax where the music depicts an infinitely bright and dense vision. Current intends for The Seven Heavenly Halls to become part of River of Light, a six-movement cycle for choir, orchestra and soloists to be completed in 2018.
ABOUT BRIAN CURRENT, BMus’96
One of Canada’s most followed and lauded young composers, Brian Current won a Juno Award earlier this year for his opera Airline Icarus. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music, Brian Current has been repeatedly recognized as one of the leading composers of his generation in North America. His music, lauded and performed internationally as well as broadcast in over 35 countries, is renowned for its energy, wit and daring bravado.
Brian Current’s music has been performed across North America and abroad by the Esprit Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra (Carnegie Hall), the Oakland Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Winston Choi, the Honens International Piano Competition, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and others.
Raised in Ottawa, Brian Current studied composition at McGill University in Montreal with Bengt Hambreaus and John Rea. He later completed his Ph.D. in composition on full fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. He now lives in Toronto and is on the board of directors of the Toronto Arts Council, the Canadian League of Composers and other organizations.
