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2011

Jocelyn Hagen

The Sorel Organization proudly announces their 2011 Recording Grant recipient, Jocelyn Hagen, who will be recording her work, amass for SATB choir, soprano, tenor and baritone soli, solo cello, cell quartet, guitar and percussion. 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.

In 2010 Jocelyn was awarded a McKnight Artist Fellowship. She has also received grants and awards from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, Minnesota Music Educators Association, VocalEssence, the Yale Glee Club, the Lotte Lehman Foundation, the Sorel Medallion Competition, the Cincinnati Camerata, the University of Minnesota, and the San Francisco Song Festival. Her commissions include the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists, Trio Callisto, Cantus, the St. Olaf Band, NDSU Gold Star Band, and the Copper Street Brass Quintet. Her work is published by Graphite Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing and Boosey and Hawkes.

For a statement from Jocelyn's regarding her work, amass, click here. For Jocelyn's full bio, click here.


Anna Shelest

The Sorel Organization proudly announces their 2011 Recording Grant recipient, Anna Shelest. Hailed by the critics as the "female reincarnation of Liszt" and a "piano lioness," Anna is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled the audiences throughout the world. Her recent engagements included debuts at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and The Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine Ms. Shelest began her piano studies at the age of six. She attended the Kharkiv Special Music School for Gifted Children, where she was a student of Gary Gelfgat and later of Sergei Polusmiak. At the age of eleven she performed at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as the youngest prize winner of the Milosz Magin International Piano Competition.

At the age of twelve Shelest made her orchestral debut with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then she has been a soloist with some of the world's most renown orchestras such as Montreal Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, under Maestro Paavo Jarvi, and Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Other appearances include Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, Lugansk Philharmonic, Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Russian Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Sinfonia and the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra.

For Anna's full bio, click here.

Photo by Tom Mcfarlane


2010

Chiayu Hsu

The Sorel Organization proudly announces their 2010 Recording Grant recipient, Chiayu Hsu. Ms. Hsu was born in Banciao, Taiwan, and received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, and Master's degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University. She has received a remarkable number of commissions.

Composer Chiayu's career has been burgeoning with a remarkable number of commissions. In April 2010, her Shan Ko was selected by the EarShot program and read by the Nashville Symphony under the baton of Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero. Of Chiayu's Moods [for oboe and string quartet], Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun wrote, "[it] combines lyricism and mild dissonance in a taut package ... the performance revealed the work's strengths."

In February 2008, her Reverie and Pursuit received its premiere performance, commissioned and performed by Carol Jantsch, the tuba principal from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Last year, her Fantasy on Wang Bao Chuan, commissioned by Taiwan's Evergreen Symphony orchestra, was selected for the American Composers Orchestra's annual Underwood New Music reading and also received an honorable mention by the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. Later, Chiayu was invited to collaborate with choreographer Keith Thompson from the danceTactics, for whom she composed Pellucid Tensions. Huan for solo harp was the winner of the Composition Contest for the 7th USA International Harp Competition in spring 2006 and was included in the repertoire for the harp competition. Chiayu was also invited to conduct a composer's forum in the competition and was interviewed for a documentary, which will be televised on PBS in 2008. In August 2006, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra premiered Hard Roads in Shu, which later received performances by the Detroit Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. Her Among Gardens was released on pianist Natalie Zhu's Meyer Media Records CD, "Images." Chiayu has received numerous awards and honors. In 1999, her Dinkey Bird won the Maxfield Parrish composition contest and was the subject of a feature in Philadelphia Inquirer. Shui Diao Ge To, composed for the 2004 Milestones Festival, received a 2005 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer's Award. She has also received the first prize in the National Taiwan Academy of Art Composition Competition, in the Charlotte Civic Orchestra Composition Competition, in the Philip Slates Memorial Composition Contest, the Prism Quartet Student Commission Award, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Award, and the William Klenz Prize. She studied at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Fontainebleau Schools, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, David Loeb, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Kelley, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe.

Chiayu will be using her Sorel grant to record a piano piece dedicated to Claudette Sorel.

For Chiayu's complete bio, please click here.


Nancy Wertsch

The Sorel Organization proudly announces their 2010 Recording Grant recipient, Nancy Wertsch. Nancy, a native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is an accomplished pianist who studied at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. After vocal studies at the Music Academy of the West and the Yale University Summer Music School, she graduated from the all-scholarship Curtis Institute of Music as a voice major. She received a Fulbright Grant and attended the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Germany for two years. Upon returning to the United States, she served on the voice faculty at the University of Memphis. Since 1979, she has lived and worked in New York. She is married to Canadian-American organist Christopher Creaghan.

As a composer, Ms. Wertsch's affinity for vocal music has inspired a large body of choral music, anthems and concert pieces. Her works are widely performed in churches and concerts, and have been heard at ACDA conventions and competitions. She has received commissions from such prestigious New York organizations as the Interchurch Center, the New York Treble Singers, the New York Concert Singers, First Presbyterian Church, and The Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. Her work for triple chorus "Antiphon for God the Father" may be heard on the Dale Warland Singers CD Bernstein and Britten. She is published by Oxford University Press and G. Schirmer. Her most recent commission, "Hail, Holy Light," was premiered by the University of Utah Singers, awarded first place in the International Chamber Choir Competition in Germany, and is to be published by Carus in 2011.

Ms. Wertsch's mezzo-soprano voice is hailed as "an instrument of rich clarity, natural and effortless." She has performed demanding twentieth-century vocal works, and has appeared on recordings on the Nonesuch, Koch International, and Bridge Records label. She is a charter member of The New York Virtuoso Singers, and as a member of Voices of Ascension her voice is on nearly all of it's CDs in repertoire ranging from Renaissance to Rorem.

For Nancy's full bio, visit http://www.wertsch.com/home.html or click here.


2009

Bora Yoon

The Sorel Organization proudly announces their 2009 Recording Grant recipient, Bora Yoon. Ms Yoon's recording entitled, "Sunken Cathedral" traces the meditative and transcendental properties of sound from early music to new music today. Her recording will juxtapose works centuries apart by composers from the 12th to 19th century, alongside original experimental 21st century works and collaborations -- including choral commissions by the Young People's Chorus of New York and the SAYAKA Women's Choir of Tokyo. Instrumentation of the record will span a dynamic range of ancient and modern instruments: ranging from classical voice, viola, Stroh violin circa 1890, conch, megaphone, antique gramophone, piano, cell phones, radios, metronomes, bike bells, turntable, antique and altered vinyl records, ancient Tibetan singing bowls, chime stickes, Buddhabox loop machines, laptop, electronices, and Subwoofing Spoons, a custom instrument designed by Bora Yoon & programmed by Brooklyn's League of Electronic Musicians & Urban Robots (LEMUR).

Ms. Yoon qualified for the Sorel Recording Grant in 2008 with her choral sound installation / surround-sound work, "Semaphore Conductus", featured on the upcoming recording.