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The Sorel Medallion
Choral Composition Contest WIinners
2010-2011

Dorothy VanAndel Frisch

Composer, singer, organist, and pianist Dorothy VanAndel Frisch believes strongly that music is a gift for people of all ages and abilities. In addition to writing music for singers of all ages (preschoolers through adults) and for the usual church groups and instruments (children's choir, adult choir, handbell choir, organ, and piano), Dorothy has specialized in composing and arranging music for unusual combinations of instruments and voices.

Dorothy's music has been called "haunting" and "inevitable," in the sense that the music strikes the listener as "perfectly suited to the words." Her choral experience includes singing with the Capella of Calvin College, the Pittsburgh Compline Choir, and the Ambrose- Romanos Singers. Her lifelong love of the pipe organ, her enthusiasm for choral music, her experiences as organist, choir director, chorister, soloist, and composer, her affinity for good literature, and her deep faith have all come together to create her setting of John Milton's "At a Solemn Music" for the Voices of Ascension and the Pascal Quoirin organ.

Dorothy is a graduate of Calvin College (Bachelor of Arts in Music, with a concentration in organ), and the University of Akron (Master of Music in history and literature). She has studied composition with Alice Parker and Jeanne Cotter. Throughout her career, she has focused on encouraging as many people as possible to use their musical gifts in worship, composing music as needed.

Dorothy resides in "the quiet corner" of Connecticut, amid dairy farms and forests. She is Composer-in-Residence and Associate Organist of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Southbridge, Massachusetts, just over the border. In her time at Holy Trinity, Dorothy has composed several anthems, the cantata "One Cold, Clear Night in Bethlehem" (text by John A. Dalles), "Exultation" for euphonium and organ, and "The Dawning Day," an Easter cantata premiered in 2010, text by John A. Dalles.

Dorothy is the arranger of the songs for Glad to Be Alive!: A Musical Character Education Program of 54 Songs for Elementary Children by Kathryn S. Atman. She created and ran a pilot program of several of the songs for St. Matthew Christian Academy. Volume I of Glad to Be Alive! was published in 2010. Dorothy's choral anthem "O God, Our Lives Are Parched and Dry (text by John A. Dalles, GIA) also came out in 2010.

Dorothy is a member of the Holy Trinity Choir and sings alto in the Holy Trinity Quartet. Her anthem "All Who Hunger" won an honorable mention in the Voices Found Choral Anthem Contest, November 2009. On December 9, 2010, "Glory to God in Highest Heaven!" (from the Christmas cantata) was performed by the Holy Cross Choir in Worcester, MA, as part of the Holy Cross Advent Festival of Lessons and Carols. For this occasion, Dorothy wrote a new accompaniment for brass quintet. On April 15, 2011, her eight-part a cappella setting of "O the Depth!" (text by John A. Dalles) was premiered by the Capella of Calvin College. Dorothy is a member of the American Guild of Organists, Worcester Chapter, and a member of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.


Marilyn Shrude

Composer Marilyn Shrude is known for her warm, lyrical music, highly linear and multi-layered with timbral contrasts that result in a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world. She received degrees from Alverno College and Northwestern University, where she studied with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. Among her more prestigious honors are those from the Guggenheim Foundation (2011 Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America/ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards for Orchestral Music (1984) and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music (1998).

Active as a composer, pianist, teacher, and contemporary music advocate, Shrude has consistently promoted American music through her many years as founder and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and as chair of the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory at Bowling Green State University. Together with saxophonist, John Sampen, Shrude has premiered, recorded and presented hundreds of works by living composers both in the United States and abroad.


Dobrinka Tabakova

Dobrinka Tabakova is a British/Bulgarian composer who has been receiving increasing international recognition for her work. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and in 2007 was awarded a doctorate in composition from King's College London. She has worked with some of today's leading musicians, orchestras and choirs including Janine Jansen, Maxim Rysanov, Gidon Kremer, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, St. Paul's Cathedral Choir and John Scott, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Kamer Choir and Maris Sirmais, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and others.

Recent projects include a Royal Philharmonic Society/ BBC commission for a viola and piano suite; a piano concerto for the 2010 Hong Kong musicarama festival and an anthem for the large project of World's Sun Songs, presented at the World Choral Symposium in Copenhagen and the American Choral Directors Association National Convention. Among prizes for her work are the Jean-Frederic Perrenoud Prize and Medal at the 4th Vienna International Music Competition (1994), the prize for the Queen's Golden Jubilee anthem (2002) and most recently she was a finalist for the 2010 Gaudeamus prize in Amsterdam.

Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 1980, Dobrinka Tabakova moved to London in 1991. Her composition teachers have included Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley and Andrew Schultz as well as masterclasses with John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Alexander Goehr, Philip Manoury, Alessandro Solbiati, Olav-Anton Thommassen and Iannis Xenakis. She lives and works in London. For more information please visit www.dobrinka.com.