Plucked from Nowhere

Molly Kien's composition The Song of Britomartis for harp and chamber orchestra has won first prize in the 2009 composition competition 'Plucked from Nowhere', organised by the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra. She will receive a prize of GBP 1000.00 and the work will be performed by the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra during its forthcoming season, planned for Winter 2010. A separate prize of Sibelius 6 music notation software was awarded to Jee Soo Shin for her quirky miniature Ha-rpy. Jee Soo Shin is from Seoul but is currently studying at Southampton University and also teaches at Oxford University.

The Alvarez Chamber Orchestra is committed to performing and creating imaginative and substantial contemporary music. It employs musicians principally from the UK, but augmented with guests from other countries.

The competition was open to composers of any age or nationality, and the length, nature and number of works to be submitted were not specified. The competition attracted a wide range of entries across all age groups from 16 to 78, and from countries including Germany, Russia, South Africa and the UK. 'The reading panel was encouraged by the number of scores received', says Geoffrey Alvarez, artistic director and conductor of the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra, 'with professional, semi-professional and amateur entrants submitting works which spanned a huge stylistic range from lyrical modality to free atonality. All our entrants will receive freedback on their entries, based on the judges' comments.' Due to the competition's success, the orchestra plans to make it an annual event.

Molly Kien was born in 1979 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. She has a bachelor's degree in composition from Indiana University, where she studied with Sven-David Sandström. This led to further studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where she received a master's degree in spring 2009. She has written for groups such as Nordic Fusion 6, the Swedish Radio Choir and Musica Vitae String orchestra. During autumn 2009 she is working with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.

The Song of Britomartis was written for Laura Stephenson, principal harpist with Stockholm's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Swedish new music chamber ensemble, KammerensembleN: they can be heard via the link below. The piece was inspired by a rug outside the auditorium of the Stockholm Concert Hall designed by Swedish artist Isaac Grünewald which draws on Minoan mythology, and in particular the Goddess Britomartis. This goddess is sometimes portrayed as a mermaid who appears in The Song of Britomartis as the harp, initially playing isolated diatonic white notes and then gradually establishing herself as the work's principal character with a cadenza of glissandi of glistening, iridescent scales coloured with flattened Gs and As.

Information: freespace.virgin.net/geoffrey.alvarez/PluckedfromNowhere.htm

Posted: 29 September 2009

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