Emma O'Halloran named a winner of 2018 Hildegard Competition
Emma O'Halloran, winner of the 2018 Hildegard Competition in New York
Last week, National Sawdust announced Emma O'Halloran one of the 2018 Hildegard Competition winners. This is the first year of the Hildegard Competition, a composition competition aimed at female and non-binary composers from around the world. Winners of the competition will receive a $7,000 cash prize, along with coaching from three critically acclaimed composers: National Sawdust Artistic Director Paola Prestini and National Sawdust curators Angélica Negrón and Du Yun. Newly commissioned works of the winners will also be performed live by Lidiya Yankovskya and the Refugee Orchestra at National Sawdust on 12 June 2018.
The winners were selected from 140 submissions from around the world. All applicants demonstrated that they met two of the following three criteria: there were no commercially released recordings of their work, that no commissions of more than $5,000 had been received by them and that there had been no professional performances of their work outside of a university setting. National Sawdust, a performance space in New York, has been committed to performing works by female composers and other underrepresented groups since it opened three years ago.
About the judges and mentors of the competition:
Angélica Negrón - Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. She's a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program and Lincoln Center Education working with learners of all ages on creative composition projects.
Paola Prestini - Paola's music has been commissioned by and performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, BAM and Barbican Centre by Brooklyn Rider, LA Philharmonic, NY Philharmonic, Choir of Trinity Wall Street and others. Her current commissions include a new opera with Robert Wilson and a new opera with Minnesota Opera. She is the founding Artistic Director and co-founder of National Sawdust.
Du Yun - Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Du Yun is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, performance artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer. Du Yun's music is championed by some of today's finest performing artists, ensembles, orchestras and organisations. Selected commissions include the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, American Composers Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, Whitney Museum of American Art, Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA, Chamber Music America and Shanghai Electronic Music Week.