Contest-winning compositions to be performed in concert at UI
URBANA – A 24-year-old graduate student composer at the Universitat der Kunste in Berlin is the winner of the 12th annual Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition at the University of Illinois.
Abel Paul will have his "fragmentos del vertigo" performed by the UI New Music Ensemble, with conductors Stephen Taylor and Mei-Fang Lin, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Foellinger Great Hall of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. After the concert, there will be a reception in the lobby featuring music by the Boneyard Jazz Quintet.
Paul, who is originally from Vitoria, Spain, will receive the $1,000 award and attend the concert, plus present his music at a Composer's Forum that same day at 3 p.m. in Room 1201 of the Music Building, 1114 W. Nevada St., U. The forum is free and open to the public.
The second-place award of $500 in the Martirano Award competition went to Sungji Hong, a Korean composer living in Greece. Her composition, "Shades of Raindrops," will be performed at the concert, along with the third-prize composition, "Inner Life," by Carl Bettendorf, who will receive $250. Bettendorf, originally from Hamburg, Germany, is a graduate student at Columbia University in New York.
The program will also feature UI Music Professor Sever Tipei's "Dux Markovians with Trees," with Tipei conducting the UI New Music Ensemble; two electro-acoustic works by UI graduate student composers Daesoon Hwang and Ju Ri Seo; and a presentation of the original video, shot in 1982, of Salvatore Martirano's "Underworld" for four actors, four percussion, two string basses, tenor sax and two-channel tape.
"Sal was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and wrote the piece in 1965, and it was first performed at Town Hall in New York," said his wife, Dorothy Martirano, who is also a musician. "This version is a video that Sal made in 1982 or '83, with the actors' parts being done by the musicians."
The UI School of Music sponsors the Martirano Composition Award Competition and concert each year in memory of Salvatore Martirano, a UI professor of composition from 1963 to 1995. He died on Nov. 17, 1995, soon after retiring.
Since it started in 1996, the competition has drawn more than 2,092 entries from all over the world. Zack Browning, professor of composition at the UI and director of the competition, said 292 compositions were entered this year.
Tickets for the concert are $10 for adults, $7 for senior citizens and $4 for students. For information, call 333-6280.
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