2005 Annual Report

The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University is pleased to announce commission winners for our 2005 competition. After reviewing 465 composer applications from 33 countries worldwide, the judging panel awarded Luca Antignani of Veroli, Italy, the $12,000 Barlow Prize to compose a new work for chamber ensemble. The judging panel also granted Martin Bresnick of New Haven, Connecticut, the distinction of Honorable Mention in this competition.

Mr. Antignani studied composition from Milan’s Scuola Civica graduating in 2000. His honors include a variety of European citations, honors, and prizes, as well as a commission from Luciano Berio to compose a work for the 2004-2005 season of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

For more information about Luca Antignani, Barlow Prize Winner, consult his website.

Claude Baker was a Visiting Professor at National Ping-tung University in Ping-tung, Taiwan during May 2005. He was also the Visiting Scholar and keynote speaker for the 2005 International Conference on Musical Arts and Pedagogy held at NPTU. In June, Professor Baker was a guest of the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Costa Rica. As part of his activities during a nine-day period, he presented master classes and lectures at the Instituto Nacional de Musica in San Jose. During the month of July, Dr. Baker served as an Artist-in-Residence for the 2005 EAMA (European American Musical Alliance) Summer Program held at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. He has also been invited to return for a second residency during the 2006 summer session.

Also in the summer of 2005, Professor Baker was awarded a grant from the “New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program” at Indiana University. The grant will subsidize in part the composition of a work for alto saxophone and orchestra. The new piece will be premiered on July 5, 2006 at the opening concert of the 14th World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia by Eugene Rousseau, saxophone, and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, David Itkin conducting. Most recently, Mr. Baker was awarded a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University to write a work for the Pacifica String Quartet.

Murray Boren is the Composer-in-Residence at Brigham Young University where he also teaches composition and music theory. His compositions include 10 operas, over 100 chamber works and numerous band and orchestra pieces. He also writes extensively for the theater. His most recent scores were for productions of “Antigone” and “Nathan the Wise.” Recent commissions include a harp concerto for the American Harp Society’s 2004 Convention, choral works for the New York Summer School of the Arts 2004 program, and both an opera and a song cycle about Joseph Smith, Jr. recordings of his compositions are available on Tantara Records.

Daniel E. Gawthrop’s Concerto for Organ and Orchestra was recently featured on a national radio broadcast of Pipedreams from American Public Media. The concerto was commissioned by Brigham Young University-Idaho in celebration of the completion of the Ruffatti pipe organ in Barrus Concert Hall. Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle organist Dr. Richard Elliott was the soloist in three premiere performances with the BYU-I Symphony Orchestra under the direction of R. Kevin Call. Additional performances of the work are currently scheduled in Roanoke, Virginia and Fort Worth, Texas. The work is published by Dunstan House. Current projects include a ten minute work for chorus and orchestra commissioned for the Reston Chorale and Fairfax Symphony Orchestra of Northern Virginia, “O Jerusalem” A Symphony for Organcommissioned by Graceland University, and an a cappella work for treble chorus commissioned by the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble.

Lansing McLoskey has been hailed as “a major talent, a deep thinker with a great ear” and “one of the best composers of his generation.” Among his numerous awards are First Prizes in the Omaha Symphony International Composition Competition, the Kenneth Davenport National Competition for Orchestral Works, the SCI/ASCAP National Composition Competition, and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Most recently he was the runner-up for the 2004 Swan Prize for Orchestral Works. Current projects include a special Fromm commission for The Radnofsky Quartet for March 2006. McLoskey is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. His music is released on Wergo Schallplatten, Capstone, Tantara, LogX, and Petroleum By-Products Records.

Melinda Wagner, a Pulitzer prize-winning composer, recently heard the New York premiere of her piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, which the National Symphony Orchestra included as part of its recent tour. Other orchestras performing this work in the current season include the Toronto and Kansas City Symphonies, and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Ms. Wagner was the Composer- in-Residence at the 2005 Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival where the Dallas Symphony performed her work 57/7 DASH (for percussion and orchestra). Ms. Wagner’s Four Settings, for soprano and mixed ensemble, was given its premiere performance by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in December 2005. She looks forward to a residency at the Cleveland Institute next season. She is currently working on a trombone concerto for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic.