News

Schulich composers win the Generation2020 composition contest

Published: 3 September 2019

Since 1994, the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal's biennial Generation composition contest has given 61 Canadian composers the opportunity to define their voices and connect with audiences across Canada. This year, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière (DMus ’19) and Matthew Ricketts (BMus ’09) are two of four Generation2020 winners selected from more than 50 applicants. Over the next 15 months, they will work closely with ECM+ musicians and artistic director Véronique Lacroix on a new commissioned work that will be performed in a ten-concert tour of Canadian cities, becoming eligible for multiple awards, grants, and commissions. 

Gabriel Dufour-Lapierrière's research focuses on the notion of controlling the directionality of musical discourse and the convergence of sound vectors to establish formal dynamism. He works with Denys Bouliane at the Schulich School of Music and belongs to the ACTOR (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) research project. He is the recipient of the 2019 Fernand-Lindsay Prix d'Europe for Composition and three SOCAN Foundation awards, among other honours. Matthew Ricketts' music has been praised for its "hypnotically churning exploration of melody” (ICareIfYouListen) and “tart harmonies and perky sputterings” (The New York Times). He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2018, his multilingual opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s Quest opened the OSM’s 84th season to great critical acclaim. He is currently a Core Lecturer at Columbia University.

Learn more about these two Schulich composers and the other Generation2020 winners on the ECM+ website, or read the press release here. Don't miss public workshops and performances of their work in Montreal on February 12 and 15, 2020, and stay tuned for the announcement of their fall 2020 concert tour with performances in Montreal, Toronto, Banff and more!

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