International Alliance for Women in Music
Winners of the IAWM 2023 Annual Concert Call for Scores
Recognizing the accomplishments of IAWM member composers and increasing the awareness of the musical contributions of women.
The International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) has selected winners of its 2023 Annual Concert Call for Scores. The competition recognizes the accomplishments of IAWM member composers and fosters IAWM’s goal of increasing awareness of the musical contributions of women. The Annual Concert will take place at the Lunart Festival in Madison, WI on September 30th and at The Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Belgium on November 4th.
IAWM 2023 Annual Concert Call for Scores Winners
Lunart Festival:
Linda Dusman for her composition “Flashpoint “
Judith Lang Zaimont for her composition “A STRANGE MAGIC – String Quartet No. 2 “
Antwerp concert:
Adrienne Albert for her composition “Doppler Effect “
Coral Douglas for her composition “on the perpetual becoming of selves “
Cara Haxo for her composition “A Few Figs from Thistles “
Tao Li for her composition “Qin Xiao Yi “
Nicole Murphy for her composition “Surfacing “
Jamie Reimer for her performance of “Shoe Jazz “ by composer Gwyneth Walker
Andrea Van Acker for her performance of “Night Bird “ by composer Karen Tanaka
Yifeng Yuan for her composition “I Saw a Butterfly Nestled in a Bell “
The Winners’ Biographies
Award-winning composer Adrienne Albert (ASCAP) has had her chamber, choral, vocal, orchestral and wind band works performed throughout the U.S. and across the globe. Her music is widely known for its “melodic and lyrical beauty” and “whimsy and playfulness”. Having previously worked as a singer with composers such as Stravinsky, Bernstein, Glass, and Schuller to name a few, Albert began composing her own music in the 1990s. Her music has been supported by noteworthy arts organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, ACF, Meet The Composer/Rockefeller Foundation, Subito Awards, MPE Foundation, ACME, and yearly ASCAP awards. She has been composer-in-residence and a visiting composer at numerous colleges and universities in NY, California, Alaska, and Colorado. A graduate of UCLA, Albert studied composition with Stephen Mosko, and orchestration with Albert Harris. Her music is widely recorded, published by Kenter Canyon Music (ASCAP) and can be found on her website.
___
Coral Douglas (b. 1999, they/them) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, focusing on aesthetics, semiotics, and meaningful communication. As a composer, Douglas’ focus lies within stylistic plurality, owing much of their musical ideas to the shared space between the Aesthetic and the Unknown. Resulting compositions seek to reinvent traditional linear models by placing value in the role of expectation. Coral places high value on composer-performer collaboration, which gives room for collective creativity and a candid, feedback-informed process. Coral’s music has been played by ensembles and soloists such as Dawn Upshaw, Loadbang, the Rhythm Method, the Trace Chamber Society, flutist Alina Windell, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Douglas has had their music performed in spaces such as the Vienna Summer Music Festival, the Washington State University Festival of Contemporary Art Music, the MMRC/MARC Festival at the University of Kansas, Walden’s Creative Musicians Retreat, and the Flyover Concert Series. Douglas is the recipient of the 2022 Ida M. Vreeland Award in Music, as well as a second-place prize from the New York Youth Symphony in 2023. Coral was also awarded the John R. Hines Award for their Symphony No. 1.
Beyond composition, Coral is active as a photographer, songwriter, and visual artist. They have served as a youth choral conductor and private lesson teacher, and they firmly believe in the necessity of accessible, diverse music education. Coral is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in Composition from Cornell University. Coral holds an M.M in Music Composition from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a B.M. in Composition and Audio Engineering from LaGrange College. Coral has received instruction from Elizabeth Ogonek, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Lee Johnson, Greg Simon, Marcos Balter, Oliver Weber, and Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin.
___
Linda Dusman’s compositions and sonic art explore the richness of contemporary life, from the personal to the political. Her work has been awarded by the International Alliance for Women inMusic, Meet the Composer, the Swiss Women’s Music Forum, the American Composers Forum, the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Ucross Foundation, and the State of Maryland in 2004, 2006, and 2011 (in both the Music: Composition and the Visual Arts: Media categories). Her compositions Dream Prayer Lullaby (2018) and Mother of Exiles (2019) both reflect on the refugee crisis, and Corona Bagatelles (2020) on the global pandemic. Her frequent collaborations with the Trio des Alpes have resulted in multiple commissions, including Thundersnow and Dancing Universe for piano trio. Former holder of the Clark University Jeppeson Chair in Music at Clark University, composer Linda Dusman is currently Professor of Music at University of Maryland Baltimore County in Baltimore.
___
Described as “movingly lyrical” (Avant Music News) and “quirky but attractive” (The Art Music Lounge), the music of Cara Haxo juxtaposes delicate, sparkly textures with the gritty and the grotesque. Haxo is the winner of the 2022 NWMF Emerging Women Composers Competition. She was also awarded the 2019 IAWM Libby Larsen Prize, the 2013 NFMC Young Composers Award, and the 2013 IAWM Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize. She has received commissions from the May Festival Youth Chorus, Hub New Music, Quince Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds. Haxo earned her Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Oregon, where she worked as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in Music Theory. She also holds degrees from Butler University and The College of Wooster. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Music at The College of Wooster and an Academic Dean and faculty member for The Walden School Young Musicians Program.
___
Award winning composer Tao Li was born and raised in Beijing, China and currently based in Eugene, Oregon working on her second Doctoral degree in Data-Driven Music Performance & Composition at the University of Oregon. The philosophy, literature, and spirituality of the ancient East, play a formative role in the aesthetic of Tao’s work. Her music consists of vivid soundscapes, colorful timbres, and interdisciplinary elements that often lead her audiences on a multi-dimensional journey full of imagination. As an Asian female musician, Tao is devoted to promoting gender equity and cultural diversity through her music as well as through collaboration with other artists. Tao’s music has been performed at concerts and music festivals throughout the world including China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Ireland, Ukraine, Brazil, and the U.S.A. Her primary interests include acoustic and electroacoustic composition, performance practices, and analysis of compositional techniques, aesthetics, and intercultural dialogues.
___
Australian composer Nicole Murphy’s music has been described as “exquisite and sensitive” (Sydney Morning Herald), “strong and compelling” (Loudmouth) and “full of exhilarating tension” (Arts Knoxville). She has been commissioned by eminent arts organisations including the Australian Ballet, the Royal Academy of Dance (London), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Experiments in Opera/Symphony Space (New York), Orchestra Victoria, Wild Rumpus (San Francisco), Chamber Sounds (Singapore), and the Definiens Project (Los Angeles). Her music has been performed by ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound, NOWensemble, the Goldner and Dover Quartets, and has been programmed at numerous festivals, including the Mizzou International Music Festival, the Norfolk Yale Chamber Music Festival, the Dallas Festival of Modern Music, the Nief Norf Festival (Tennessee), the Risuonanze Festival (Italy), and the Vox Feminae Festival (Tel Aviv).
Nicole is the recipient of various awards, including the AMP Tomorrow Maker Fund (2020), the inaugural Layton Composer Fellowship at the University of NSW (2018), Ensemble Offspring’s Noisy Women Commission (2019), the MAFB International Commissioning Prize (2015), and the Theodore Front International Orchestral Prize (2013). Nicole is represented by the Australian Music Centre and is published by Wirripang. She teaches composition at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University and holds a PhD from the University of Queensland (2017).
https://www.nicolemurphy.com.au/
___
Soprano Jamie Reimer and pianist Stacie Haneline have been collaborators for over a decade. In 2017, the two were honored performers at the African American Arts Song Alliance featuring Robert Owens’ 4 Sonnets to Duse. The team’s CD, The Last Songs of Robert Owens, was released in November 2020 by Centaur Records. The American Prize hailed the duo in 2021 with two auspicious awards citing Judges Special Citation for Art Song and Chamber music of Robert Owens’. Active recitalists, Reimer and Haneline perform throughout the U.S. and internationally. The duo is also dedicated to cutting-edge research on collaborative partnerships between singers and pianists. Reimer and Haneline have been invited to present their findings at numerous conferences in Europe and the U.S.
Recognized for her rich tone and sensitive storytelling, soprano Jamie Reimer has performed in opera, oratorio and recital venues around the United States, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and Australia. Her concert appearances include performances of Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Choral Fantasy, as well as Liszt’s Christus for the American Liszt Society’s international festival. Favorite operatic repertoire includes Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Contessa Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), and Anna Maurrant (Street Scene). With a particular interest in contemporary American art song, Reimer’s research focuses on the life and work of composer Robert Owens for which she was recognized with a Special Judges’ Citation from The American Prize in 2021.
In 2012, she gave the world premiere of Owens’ 4 Sonnets to Eleonora Duse, composed for her voice, and performed the role of Ursula in the North American premiere of Owens’ opera Culture! Culture! in 2015.
Dr. Reimer is the Richard H. Larsen Distinguished Professor of Music and Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and Artist-Faculty at the Orfeo Music Festival in Vipiteno, Italy.
___
Andrea Van Acker (°1995, she/her) is a Belgian classical saxophonist and music educator. She has studied at LUCA School of Arts in Leuven, the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, the Royal Conservatoire of Liège (Belgium), and at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. As an artist and human being, Andrea likes to use her social engagement as a core value in her professional activities. She is currently setting up a workshop around gender sensitivity for fellow music educators, a project for which she was selected as a mentee for the Women’s+ Mentoring Program by the Committee for Gender Equity, part of the North-American Saxophone Alliance. As a performer, she is also working on an interdisciplinary project around urban wilderness with APUS collective, and she regularly performs together with cellist Alexandre Bughin as the duo Anchor, exploring the musical possibilities of their quite unusual configuration.
Besides performing, Andrea coaches beginning saxophonists of all ages as a saxophone teacher at the public music schools of Wilrijk and Merksem (Antwerp, Belgium).
___
Yifeng Yvonne Yuan converts the frequency of herself losing socks, into the frequency of the pitches; she weighs raindrops to decide the weight of her noteheads. She is a composer, performer, and media artist, born and raised in China, and currently lives between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student in music composition and a master’s student in media art & Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Yvonne studied sociology in college before she committed to being a composer. However, her music career began much earlier without her realizing it. She has played the piano since the age of six, and that soon turned her into a keyboardist/singer in a rock band, where she began her passion for writing music. In college, Yvonne became heavily involved in film scoring and theater music. Her music has been performed at the UCLA Freud Playhouse and the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Yvonne has studied with Joao Oliveira and JoAnn Kuchera-Morin at UCSB.
She has studied with Richard Danielpour, Kay Rhie, and Ian Krouse at UCLA. Yvonne draws inspiration from the sounds of nature and the ritualistic practices of humans before language was invented. She constantly takes inspiration from non-musical sounds, including the sound of rustling leaves, the beeping of Morse code, and the beating of the heart. She composes for orchestra, and chamber ensembles, and is an avid electronic/computer music enthusiast. Her music has been featured at HighScore Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, EAMA Institute, and many more. She was a recipient of the Corwin Award at UCSB and a finalist of the Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award. As a performer/live sound artist, Yvonne played at the Other Art Fair Los Angeles in April 2023. Her multimedia work “Memory..memory…” will be
performed at the Santa Barbara Center of Art, Science, and Technology in June 2023. Currently, Yvonne is working on a multimedia electroacoustic live piece. Her new work for the Riot Ensemble will be premiered in Viitasaari, Finland in July 2023.
In her free time, Yvonne writes poetry and skateboards in her basement.
___
The music of Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945) is internationally acclaimed for its immediacy, dynamism and emotion and is performed world-wide. Her style is distinguished by its spirit of rhapsody featuring sudden shifts in texture, instrumental coloring and atmosphere. Her 132 works include many prize-winning pieces covering every genre: Six symphonies, chamber opera, music for wind ensemble, for chorus and solo voice, and works for individual instruments plus a wide variety of chamber music. Her principal publishers are Subito Music (http://www.subitomusic.com), Galaxy/ ECS, Jeanné and Vivace.
Among orchestras programming her music are: Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore and Mississippi symphonies, Berlin and Czech Radio symphonies, Slovak National Philharmonic, Camerata Bern, the Janacek Philharmonic and the Kremlin Chamber
Orchestra. 26 CDs are currently available (Naxos, MSR Classics, Harmonia Mundi, Parma/Navona, etc.). Recent all-Zaimont recordings include a CD of orchestral music (Kirk Trevor: Slovak National Philharmonic – Naxos. three world premieres), chamber
music CD (Eternal Evolution. The Harlem Quartet and Awadagin Pratt – Navona. three world premieres ); 2012 piano solo CD (Christopher Atzinger – Naxos); a 2012 2-disc album of her solo piano music (Elizabeth Moak: MSR Classics – 15 works); and 2016 CD featuring Janacek Philharmonic’s performance of PURE, COOL (Water) -Symphony No.4.
Judith Zaimont is actively commissioned and has several prizes and honors.. She is the subject of 27 doctoral dissertations, and a Featured Composer at U.S. Festivals and Residencies. Her music is adopted for repertoire lists for major international performance competitions.
A notable pianist from childhood on (age 11: The Lawrence Welk Show; age 16: Mitch Miller Show), Zaimont is also a distinguished educator with professor appointments over 36 years at US universities, including Peabody Conservatory, Queens College and
Hunter College – CUNY, chairing the Music Department at Adelphi University (1989-1991), and the University of Minnesota (1992 -2005) where she led the Composition program from 1998 onwards. She is equally skilled as a writer, creating and editing the Greenwood book series ,The Musical Woman: An International Perspective; her American Music Teacher magazine article “Embracing New Music” was named 2009 Article of the Year by Music Teachers National Association (MTNA).