For immediate release – April 5, 2022
The Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and the Freedman family are pleased to announce that CMC Associate Composer Bekah Simms has won the 2022 Harry Freedman Recording Award for her piece metamold.
The Harry Freedman Recording Award was established in 2010 by the Freedman family to honour this leading figure in Canadian composition. The Award supports creative costs associated with making audio recordings for a selected Canadian composer’s music. Offered every other year, the Award is the primary activity of the Harry Freedman Fund, a permanent endowment administered by the Canadian Music Centre and managed by the Ontario Arts Foundation.
Harry Freedman is one of Canada’s most frequently performed composers and founding member of the Canadian League of Composers. His over 200 compositions for a vast array of ensembles, voices and genres, are performed internationally and has been commissioned by some of the most prolific Canadian arts organizations. Named an Officer of the Order of Canada, Freedman was awarded the Lynch-Staunton Award in 1998 by the Canada Council for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist.
Today we celebrate the 100th birthday and legacy Harry Freedman left behind for Canadian music and beyond. Click here to read special messages and more on the celebration.
About the piece:
Metamold is an ambitious work for large ensemble and electronics. There are 3 different versions of the work with a modular solo section and the work contains over 60 live-triggered electronic cues and is built on several different just intonation tunings. metamold was a triple commission from Crash Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, and NYNME as a result of the 2019 Barlow Prize. The work’s electronic component uses commercial recordings of the three commissioning ensembles and integrates them with and recontextualizes them with the live instrumental parts. Because the electronics use recordings of the ensembles that premiered it, the piece is almost like a double exposure image, presenting the ensembles’ past and present on top of one another. For Simms this work feels like a signature piece “fully representing [her] current musical influences and interests in a way that has coalesced into a singular statement.”
About the Jury:
A national jury consisting of Stacy Brown, Jacquie Leggatt, Pouya Hamidi, and Carmen Braden reviewed a variety of compelling applications from composers across the country and living abroad, representing diverse styles and experience. The jury was impressed with the support of so many well-known ensembles outside of Canada that Bekah’s project received. They noted the profound impact a recording like this, created by an ensemble based, and the record released, outside of Canada would have on Bekah’s career. The jury praised the piece as being “bold, interesting, and dynamic” with a clear vision of the recording process.
About Bekah Simms:
JUNO and Gaudeamus Award-nominee Bekah Simms is a Toronto-based composer whose varied acoustic and electroacoustic output has been described as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music) and lauded for its “sheer range of ingenious material, expressive range and sonic complexity” (The Journal of Music.) Foremost among her current compositional interests is quotation and the friction between recognizability and complete obfuscation, resulting in nervous, messy, and frequently heavy musical landscapes. Recent interests in just intonation and virtual instruments have resulted in increasingly lush and strange harmonic environments.
Bekah is the recipient of over 30 awards and prizes, including the 2019 Barlow Prize. Her music has been widely performed across Canada, the United States, and Europe, and interpreted by a diverse range of top-tier performers from soloists to symphony orchestras. She holds a D.M.A. in music composition from the University of Toronto, where she currently teaches Applied Composition.
Learn more about Bekah by visiting her website.
About the Canadian Music Centre (CMC)
The Canadian Music Centre is a catalyst that connects you to the ever-evolving world of musical creation in Canada through performance, education, and promotion. The CMC provides unique resources for exploring, discovering, and performing Canadian music. We are passionate about nurturing a musical community that honours our legacy and supports the professional development of Canadian musicians and composers. Since 2008, the CMC has presented a Classical Showcase annually at the JUNOS.
Connect with the Canadian Music Centre at cmccanada.org, on Facebook (Canadian Music Centre), on Twitter (@cmcnational) or Instagram (@cmcnational).
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For further information and media inquiries, please contact:
Holly Nimmons, Director, Development & Communications
Phone: 416-371-6486 | Email: holly.nimmons@cmccanada.org
