Earlier this month, the Azrieli Music, Arts and Tradition Centre (AMACC) named the 4 Azrieli Music Prize Laureates for 2026. They’re: Hana Ajiashvili, (the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music); Dalit Hadass Warshaw, (the Azrieli Fee for Jewish Music); Nicholas Denton Protsack (the Azrieli Fee for Canadian Music); and Adrian Mocanu (the Azrieli Fee for Worldwide Music).
The Azrieli Music Prizes had been created in 2014 as a biennial celebration of excellence in music composition. Every AMP competitors cycle focuses on a selected instrumentation class. For 2026, the main target shall be on works for choir with orchestra and elective soloists.
Every laureate will obtain a prize package deal that’s valued at $250,000 CAD, making it the most important music composition competitors in Canada, and one of many largest on the planet. It consists of:
- A money award of $50,000 CAD;
- A efficiency of their work by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and OSM Refrain, carried out by Asher Fisch, on the AMP Gala Live performance on October 15, 2026;
- Two subsequent worldwide performances;
- A industrial recording of their prize-winning work, additionally that includes the OSM.
Three jury panels scrutinized the proposals and works, together with composers, musicologists, conductors and producers. For the 2026 prize, they had been Barbara Assiginaak C.M. O.Ont., Ofer Ben-Amots, Gisèle Ben-Dor, Chaya Czernowin, Margareta Ferek-Petrić, Jonathan Goldman, Daniel Kidane, Neil W. Levin, Samy Moussa, Steven Mercurio, David Pay, Colleen Renihan, Ana Sokolović, Na’ama Zisser and previous AMP Laureates Avner Dorman and Kelly-Marie Murphy.
The Composers & Works
Dr. Hana Ajiashvili — Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music
The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is awarded to a composer who the judges really feel has written the most effective undiscovered work of Jewish music. Georgian-Israeli composer Hana Ajiashvili’s 2022 work Riddle is predicated on the phrases of medieval poet Yehuda Halevi, and revolves round themes of persecution and resilience.
Q&A
LV: How did you come to find the poetry of Yehuda Halevi?
HA: I found Yehuda Halevi’s poetry whereas looking for a Hebrew textual content from the medieval interval. I wished one thing concise however highly effective — a textual content that carries each thriller and emotional depth. After I encountered this quick riddle by Halevi, I instantly felt its depth.
Regardless that it consists of just a few traces, it opens a complete world: philosophical, symbolic, filled with silence and hidden which means. I felt an prompt connection to it, and I knew I wished to construct a musical universe round these phrases.
LV: What high quality of their work impressed you to compose music round it?
HA: What impressed me most in Halevi’s textual content is its capability to say a lot with so little. The riddle speaks about one thing comfortable, delicate and silent — but highly effective sufficient to “kill folks quietly.”
In keeping with some rabbinical interpretations, the reply to this riddle is the quill — the feather used to signal orders that decided life or demise. Within the Center Ages, such a quill could possibly be used to signal decrees in opposition to Jewish communities throughout occasions of persecution.
This concept struck me profoundly: that one thing so mild and silent might carry such damaging energy. And sadly, this theme nonetheless resonates right this moment. Wars proceed, violence begins with a call, a signature, a single gesture.
This distinction — between fragility and brutality, silence and power — grew to become the emotional core of my musical response. It’s what impressed me to construct a musical world round Halevi’s phrases.
LV: What does profitable the prize imply to you and the work itself?
HA: Profitable this prize is a gigantic honor for me and for the piece itself. Riddle is a really private work, rooted in historical past, philosophy, and deep emotion, so receiving this recognition feels extremely significant.
For me as a composer, it’s a second of encouragement — a affirmation that the inventive dangers I take, the colors I seek for, the dialogues I create between previous and current, actually attain folks.
And for the piece, this prize provides it a brand new life. It brings the work right into a broader worldwide context, permits it to be heard by new audiences, and opens an area for the concepts behind it to resonate globally.
I really feel grateful, impressed, and deeply moved.
Adrian Mocanu — Azrieli Fee for Worldwide Music
The Azrieli Fee for Worldwide Music is awarded to a composer whose proposed work focuses on cultures which can be related to their lived expertise. Romanian-Ukrainian composer Adrian Mocanu’s proposed work is titled de l’encra escafada (“from light ink”), and appears to reestablish the voices of the trobairitz, who had been ladies troubadours in medieval Provence. The work makes use of advanced choral textures, and 4 violas da gamba, and is impressed by the one track that survives from composer Beatriz de Dia.
Q&A
LV: How did you come to know the work of Beatriz de Dia (her single surviving work)? Was it the results of your individual analysis?
AM: Sure, it was the results of my analysis, so to talk. Principally, I used to be simply listening by way of bunches of recordings of early music ensemble Hespérion XXI (one based by Jordi Savall, a legend of traditionally knowledgeable efficiency), and as soon as I stumbled upon the recording of “A chantar mer…” written by de Dia. I used to be so moved by it, principally as a result of the vocal half was sung by Montserrat Figueras (one other legend), whose interpretation was beautiful. So it simply caught in my head and I used to be listening to it on repeat. That was a really very long time in the past. After I got here throughout the Azrieli, it simply popped out in my head and in a single second I had it clear, what my software and the thought can be about and what materials I wished to work with.
LV: How do you view the trobairitz, i.e. what have you learnt about them, and the way will this translate into music?
The trobairitz are a fairly obscure phenomenon in music, not that a lot of their legacy was preserved. This one track sure, because the notation survived and it was reinterpreted by a couple of of early music ensembles. After we talk about troubadour artwork, the very first thing that seems in our thoughts are male troubadours like Giraut de Bornelh, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, Peire Vidal — and I labored with a few of their texts in my earlier works. If we talk about early music feminine authors, it’s principally Hildegard von Bingen as essentially the most famend instance (whose legacy has been addressed to in modern music by many composers), however not the Provençal trobairitz. With my work, I wish to draw extra consideration to them.
As for my new piece, in fact I cannot be one other interpretation of the Medieval unique — it will likely be a journey departing from the interpretations that exist, and the main target shall be on working with the textual content, with Occitan language, with deconstructing it, working with it phonetically in choral textures. The identical applies to musical quotes — they are going to develop into uncooked materials for filtering.
LV: What can this music, this piece, provide to trendy audiences?
AM: To start with, I wish to convey a contemporary perspective on early music feminine authors, and an understanding that feminine composers did exist in Medieval occasions. Additionally to convey consideration to the decline of Occitan language and the necessity to protect it
And, in fact, the piece itself would convey an emotional expertise to the viewers, a second of suspense, of discovery.
Dalit Hadass Warshaw — Azrieli Fee for Jewish Music
The Azrieli Fee for Jewish Music is awarded to the composer whose proposed work solutions the query “What’s Jewish music?” in a artistic and interesting method. American composer, pianist and thereminist Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s proposed work Letter From Throughout the River is impressed by the true story of her great-grandfather. In Poland throughout WWII, he swam throughout the Bug River to be able to ship a goodbye letter, earlier than returning to his household, and his destiny.
Q&A
LV: How do you plan to inform your great-grandfather’s story through music? i.e. what qualities within the music will categorical the essence of that story?
DHW: By this work, I discover the profound inside battle that I think about my great-grandfather to have skilled throughout a vital, existential second of alternative, as he swam throughout the River Bug not as soon as, however twice: first, from Nazi-occupied Poland to Soviet Ukraine, to be able to mail a farewell letter to his sons (who had been lucky sufficient to have emigrated earlier than 1939) and, second, his return traversal to rejoin his household, absolutely conscious of the destiny that awaited them and their group. I convey the story by way of literary allegory, using the Biblical situation of Jacob wrestling the Angel as a foil for my great-grandfather’s personal wrangling with self, and supreme take a look at of will. Musically, I embody this by way of highlighting potentials for distinction, not merely throughout the story itself (the selection between life and sure doom, freedom versus love and loyalty), however by way of my use of a number of languages (English, Hebrew and Yiddish), and the assorted ways in which the instrumental and choral forces, and the soloists, relate to — and spar — with one another.
At varied factors I’ve the Yiddish and Hebrew vie with one another within the evocation of Jacob’s battle with the Angel, pitting the unique Biblical Hebrew in opposition to the early-Twentieth-century Yiddish translation by Solomon “Yehoash” Blumgarten. At different occasions, the solo baritone wrangles with the refrain, that assumes the position of the River. The 2 vocal soloists oppose one another as effectively, when it comes to their voice varieties, and the languages they sing: the baritone (representing my great-grandfather and singing in each English and Yiddish, at the moment thought-about the mameh-loshen or “mom tongue”) and coloratura soprano (representing the Angel, singing solely in Hebrew, the loshen-koydesh, or the “Holy tongue”).
(Of non-public significance to me, as a feminine composer, was the choice to reverse the standard gender associations that had been in place for every language on the time: within the shtetl, Hebrew was nearly solely a males’s language, used solely in scholarly and non secular contexts; ladies, as a result of their conventional lack of training, learn and wrote solely within the vernacular Yiddish.)
LV: Is that this a undertaking you already had in thoughts, or did you create the idea in response to the prize submission?
DHW: Sure, this was a undertaking I already had in thoughts for fairly a while, heightened lately by the necessity to perceive my very own background and identification, and the weather that comprise who I’m as each human and creator. I used to be significantly researching the premise behind this work even earlier than I knew what musical forces I might use: except for the familial anecdotes, I scoured memoirs of survivors and “Yizkor” (Remembrance) books from that individual space of Poland, finding accounts of surviving members of the Jewish group in Dubienka who recalled my great-grandfather and left behind detailed descriptions of his character and affect. I studied images. I learn monographs on the historical past and sociopolitical local weather of the interwar interval main as much as these occasions, literature from distinguished writers of the time, and even launched into a severe examine of Yiddish (by way of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Analysis).
As a composer, one is conditioned to economize and infrequently compromise within the sensible curiosity of enabling a efficiency. After I learn the standards for the prize submission, it felt as if essentially the most best state of affairs was being introduced to me, particularly as my preliminary conception certainly had been for the instrumentation made out there: refrain, orchestra, and vocal soloists. I really feel so grateful to have such a big forces accessible to me, in order that I can discover my final imaginative and prescient for this work.
LV: What do you hope audiences will take away from the expertise of listening to the piece?
DHW: With each work of mine, my hope is to enfold the listener into the expertise that I’m depicting, each airing the particular story and universalizing its elemental human features. Whereas this explicit story may be very distinctive to a sure time, place, and tradition, it’s however a common one which has large relevance in our present occasions. A elegant energy of music is that it reaches past such confines of language and historical past: it overcomes boundaries, and due to this fact unifies and permits empathy. An final crux of this explicit story, I feel, is the existential query of alternative. My hope is that the listener may be pulled into my great-grandfather’s expertise in going through this query, and thus, the heartrending weight behind his sacrifice and supreme message of blessing that he leaves behind.
Nicholas Denton Protsack — Azrieli Fee for Canadian Music
The Azrieli Fee for Canadian Music is awarded to a Canadian composer whose proposed work engages with the notion of composing live performance music in Canada right this moment in all its complexities. New Zealand–based mostly Canadian composer and cellist Nicholas Denton Protsack was chosen for his proposed piece Peak of Land for orchestra, refrain and solo cello. His piece will reimagine the thought of composing Canadian music within the context of environmental listening and renewal.
Q&A
LV: How will your piece replicate the themes you want to centre — the setting and renewal?
NDP: The intention of Peak of Land is to reimagine the orchestra and refrain as not a musical ensemble, however a residing and interdependent sonic ecosystem; the viewers members should not a bunch of passive observers, however lively individuals in that ecosystem; lastly, the solo cello won’t be a soloistic ‘important character’ of the work, however a supporting character that makes use of its voice to affirm that the setting is in actual fact the primary character. With out giving an excessive amount of away, this shall be achieved by restaging the orchestra and choir such that parts of it are interspersed throughout the viewers, using percussion devices derived from pure or on a regular basis supplies one would possibly encounter of their setting, and calling upon the ensemble and viewers to contemplate the work not as an outline of Canadian environments however one that’s meant for his or her advocacy.
LV: Will it deal with particular options of the Canadian panorama, or provide a extra generalized focus?
NDP: A particular focus shall be positioned upon Canadian environments that I’m extremely acquainted with, that are predominantly within the west and north-west. The main focus won’t be solely on their options, nevertheless, but additionally on the tough nature of their historical past: one fraught with cultural genocide, violence, and extraction.
LV: How does sound replicate ecology — i.e. what parts will you utilize to convey your idea to life?
NDP: There are maybe limitless methods wherein this may be achieved, quite a few which shall be drawn upon in Peak of Land. Musically collaborating with the more-than-human world is one thing that I’ve come to name ‘musical ecopoiesis’ which is a time period that I developed throughout my doctoral research. This will embrace simple gadgets, just like the musical imitation of pure sounds (birdsong, thunderstorms, rivers, and so on.), and extra advanced ones, just like the musical illustration of bodily, environmental options and even the interpretation of scientific information into music.
Congratulations to the winners, and we’ll sit up for listening to their music.
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
