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From left to right Martha Sullivan 3rd place,
Judith Cloud 1st place, Abbie Betinis 2nd place
and Judy Cope Executive Director
of The Sorel Organization
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The Sorel Medallion
Choral composition contest
2008-2009
The 3rd annual Sorel Medallion in Choral Composition winners concert took place October 27th in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Executive Director Judy Cope and Peabody award winning announcer/producer Elliott Forrest of WQXR presented the awards.
1st place was awarded to Judith Cloud for her piece entitled "Anacreontics." Classical guitarist Kenneth Meyer artistically accompanied the winning piece.
2nd place was awarded to Abbie Betinis for "Mary and Gabriel." This beautiful setting of Rupert Brooke's poem was set to a 9 piece percussion part performed by the exceptional percussionist Eric Charleston.
3rd place went to Voices of Ascensions beloved singer, composer, orchestrator, Martha Sullivan. "Dixit Dominus" was written for this competition and Ms. Sullivan was on of the few applicants that actually scored for full orchestra.
Jocelyn Hagen's piece, "Benedictus," was the conductor's choice piece for the evening. The entire mass will be premiered in February of 2010 for the Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists.
The evening concluded with the announcement of the 2010 Medallion program. Submission for this competition will be posted in January but all applicants must write organ accompaniment.
Abbie Betinis
 Acclaimed as "audacious... edgy and thrilling," the music of Abbie Betinis (b. 1980) has been commissioned by more than 40 music organizations including the Dale Warland Singers, Cantus, and The Schubert Club. She has won grants and awards from the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota Music Educators Association, and was recently declared a 2009 McKnight Artist Fellow.
A language enthusiast, Abbie enjoys delving into ancient and modern texts in the hopes of inspiring greater cultural literacy and exchange. Her text-setting has been called imaginative and sensitive, even while pushing performers to explore extended vocal techniques such as yodeling, crying, spitting, whistling, glottal grunts, or bird-calling. Recent projects investigate ancient Greek charms and spells, African melorhythm technique, pre-Christian Irish keening, and – in an extended work written for The Rose Ensemble – the mystical imagery of 14th century Sufism for women's voices, vielle, oud, and Persian hand percussion.
Abbie holds a BA from St. Olaf College, MA from the University of Minnesota, and has done post-graduate work at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, France, where she studied harmony and counterpoint in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger with Phillip Lasser, Samuel Adler, and Narcis Bonet. In 2006, Abbie launched a self-publishing company, and now markets and distributes her own scores internationally. Additional scores are available through Fred Bock Co., Graphite Publishing, Kjos, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and G. Schirmer's Dale Warland Series.
Since 2005, Abbie has served as Composer-in-Residence for The Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has also held residencies with The Singers–Minnesota Choral Artists and The Rose Ensemble. She lives in St. Paul.
Learn more about Abbie on her website at www.abbiebetinis.com.
Judith Cloud
Composer Judith Cloud's gift for vocal writing originates out of her own rich experiences as an accomplished mezzo-soprano soloist. Highlights of her performing career include a performance of the Brahms Neueliebeslieder Waltzer with the acclaimed radio program Saint Paul Sunday Morning, as well as being the soloist for the American premiere performance of Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time. Cloud first began composing in 1974, and her vast catalogue of works features art song, choral music, and instrumental chamber music, as well as a concerto for soprano saxophone and orchestra. Recordings of her works include the cantata Feet of Jesus, for soprano and baritone soloists, soprano saxophone, chorus and organ, with the BIS label on a CD entitled "Spirituals," released in 1997 by Stockholm's Saint Jacob's Chamber Choir and directed by Gary Graden. Ms. Cloud's recent projects include Neruda Songs II, composed for soprano Eileen Strempel and pianist Sylvie Beaudette, and Three Spells, commissioned by Nancy Hadden, conductor of the British women's ensemble, Psallite. Words from an Artist's Palette, commissioned by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale received its premiere on July 13, 2007. Three Impressions of Northern Arizona, for flute and piano was premiered in China in September of 2007 by flutist Emily MacKay and pianist Rita Borden. Dr. Cloud is currently Coordinator of Voice at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where she teaches studio voice and vocal pedagogy. Inspiring students with her teaching as well as her compositional talents, she was awarded "Teacher of the Year" for the College of Fine Arts in 2004.
Martha Sullivan
 Martha Sullivan's music has been praised as "vibrant" and "a singer's favorite." She has earned commissions from such leading voices in American choral music as the Dale Warland Singers and the Gregg Smith Singers (with whom she was a resident composer, 2002–2008), as well as the Esoterics (Seattle, WA), Bella Voce (Reno, NV), Chicago A Cappella, the New York Treble Singers, the Manhattan Choral Ensemble, and Vocativ (Zürich, Switzerland). Numerous ensembles have performed her work, including such New York fixtures as Cerddorion and Equal Voices, as well as groups further afield, such as San Francisco's Volti, and the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers. Her work has been championed by Stephen Tharp, the international organ recitalist, and recorded by The Esoterics, Chicago A Cappella, and mezzo-soprano Virginia Dupuy. Her work appears in the book Singing for Dummies. Her chamber music has been performed by the Pharos Music Project, of which she was a cofounder. She has received several Meet the Composer grants for her work with Gregg Smith, as well as recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work with the Esoterics, and she won the Dale Warland Singers' Choral Ventures competition in its final year (2003).
Sullivan is also an experienced singer of new music. She made her New York City Opera debut on the company's series of new operas, VOX, in 2007, as the troubled mother, Louise, in Gordon Beeferman's The Rat Land; she repeated the role on VOX2009. Other highlights as a soloist include premieres by Toby Twining (Chrysalid Requiem) and John Zorn (various), and Peter Westergaard's Alice in Wonderland with the Center for Contemporary Opera. She has also performed Steve Reich's Tehillim with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Milton Babbitt's Elizabethan Sextette on the Guggenheims's "Works and Process" series, and Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel with Vox Vocal Ensemble. She has also sung as a chorister with many of New York's choral groups over the last decade; in fact, her very first professional New York job was singing at Dennis Keene's choral workshop, Keenefest, in 1998.
Jocelyn Hagen
Jocelyn Hagen (b. 1980), a native of Valley City, North Dakota, composes music that has been described as "dramatic and deeply moving" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, and this is very evident in her work. Her music is melodically driven, boldly beautiful, and intricately crafted. Since her graduation from St. Olaf College in 2003, Jocelyn has received over 40 commissions, 50 premieres, and 100 performances.
Jocelyn has received grants and awards from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, Minnesota Music Educators Association, VocalEssence, the Yale Glee Club, the Lotte Lehman Foundation, the University of Minnesota, and the San Francisco Song Festival. Her commissions include the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota, the North Dakota Music Teacher's Association, Cantus, the St. Olaf Band, NDSU Gold Star Band, and the Copper Street Brass. She is currently Composer-in-Residence for Shorter College in Rome, Georgia, as well as the group she sings in: The Singers – Minnesota Choral Artists. She founded Graphite Publishing, an online publishing company, in 2004 along with fellow composer Timothy C. Takach, and is also published by Boosey and Hawkes. Former teachers include Judith Lang Zaimont, Peter Hamlin, David Maslanka, Mary Ellen Childs, and Timothy Mahr. She completed her Masters in Composition at the University of Minnesota in 2006.
Visit www.jocelynhagen.com for more information.
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