The Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award is an international competition for young composers which carries a cash prize and a performance of the wining composition. The competition is held in memory of Salvatore Martirano who was a professor of composition at the University of Illinois from 1963 to 1995.
The First Annual Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Concert will be a recital of contemporary piano music by Marilyn Nonken. This recital will feature a performance of the winning composition Echoes' White Veil which was written for Nonken by New York composer Jason Eckardt.
Nonken will also perform Martirano's Cocktail Music and works by Harvey, Rakowski, and Salonen. Eckardt and Nonken are co-directors of Ensemble 21 which is a contemporary music group in New York City.
Jason Eckardt is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Ensemble 21 contemporary music group in New York City. Eckardt's works have been commissioned and performed in Europe, Asia, Australia, and America by the Gaudeamus Foundation, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble de Ereprijs, The Guild of Musicians at Ewha, Ensemble Intermodulacio, LIBRA Ensemble, New Millennium, and the Centre de la Voix. His music has been heard at many international festivals including the Darmstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik, Foundation Royaumont's Voix Nouvelles series, the New Consortium series, the ISCM. Musica Nova Festival, the Society of Composers National Conference, and the International Bartok Festival. Currently an Andrew Mellon Presidential Fellow at Columbia University, he is the recipient of awards and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, ASCAP, the National Foundation of Advancement in the Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music. Among the composers with whom Eckardt has studied are Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough, and Jonathan Harvey.
Marilyn Nonken has emerged as one of the most talented young pianists dedicated to contemporary music. Upon coming to New York City in 1992, Ms. Nonken immediately became involved in the contemporary music community, performing world premieres of numerous solo works and appearing with such groups as Music of Our Time, Columbia Composers, and Ensemble 21. Regarding her New York recital of the complete solo works of Arnold Schoenberg, Bernard Holland of The New York Times announced, "These pieces are difficult for both the body and the intellect, but her technique is in place and her feeling for these pieces is so heartfelt, so sincere, that one is constantly engaged." Ms. Nonken's repertoire includes works by Boulez, Dallapiccola, Davidovsky and Messiaen, and in 1996 she performed compositions by Ligeti, Takemitsu, and the American premiere of James Dillon''s Spleen. In addition, she recently recorded the first compact disc release of Salvatore Martirano's Cocktail Music.
For more info on the award or to make a donation to the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition.