The 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert showcased world premieres by four distinguished laureates, performed by musicians from the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Chorus under Chorusmaster Andrew Megill. The event, hosted by Dr Sharon Azrieli CQ and Mario Paquet, featured works exploring diverse cultural and philosophical themes.
Josef Bardanashvili’s Light to My Path, winner of the Prize for Jewish Music, presented a choral fantasy inspired by the Book of Psalms. The Commission for Jewish Music recipient Yair Klartag premiered The Parable of the Palace, a work for choir and double basses drawing on Maimonides’s medieval philosophy.
Commission for Canadian Music laureate Jordan Nobles deconstructed Indigenous, French and English place names into their phonemes to express the Canadian landscape and to capture the awe it inspires in his kanata for a capella voices. Meanwhile, Mexican composer Juan Trigos’s Simetrías Prehispánicas honoured pre-Hispanic cultural heritage through a blend of 15th-century Spanish and Nahuatl texts.
A pre-concert talk featuring the laureates and musicologist Sylvia L’Ecuyer CM provided context for the evening’s performances. The gala, which remains available for replay via the links below, demonstrated the Azrieli Music Prizes’ commitment to fostering diverse musical voices and
cultural exchange.
Watch the 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert via the following links:
Amadeus.tv: amadeus.tv/library
Medici.tv: medici.tv/en/concerts/gala-concert-2024-azrieli-music-prizes
Violin Channel: theviolinchannel.com/vc-live-azrieli-music-prizes-gala-concert/
IDAGIO: activate.idagio.com/live/event/2024-azrieli-music-prizes-gala-concert