In December 2013, in honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Girl Chorister Course in Summer 2015, Saint Thomas Church and Choir School in New York City invited composers from around the world to create a new and unpublished setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis suitable for established girl or boy choir programs. Entries were received from 47 composers in 17 different states, as well as Australia, Canada, the U.K., and Germany, and were presented anonymously to a panel of distinguished musicians, who are now pleased to release the results of the competition as follows:
Randall Svane of Montclair, New Jersey, has won first prize.
Philip Moore from the United Kingdom has been awarded second prize.
Randall Svane has been active for the past 30 years as an organist, conductor, and teacher. His music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Florence, the Munich Chamber Choir, the Schola Cantorum Leipzig, the Leipzig Vocal Ensemble, the Vratsa State Philharmonic in Bulgaria, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe’s 20th Century Unlimited, the Minneapolis Artists Ensemble, and the Borromeo String Quartet. Svane’s achievements have been recognized through grants, prizes, and awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Astral Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. His extensive catalogue includes orchestral, chamber, operatic, and choral works. Svane currently serves as Music Director for the Montclair Kimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey.
Philip Moore has held posts at Eton, Canterbury, Guildford, and York. Although much of his music is for choirs and organs, he has also written song cycles, chamber music, piano music, and music for orchestras. Moore’s pieces are sung in cathedrals and churches throughout the world, and he is frequently featured on BBC broadcasts of Choral Evensong. Moore composes regularly for the choirs of Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut, a church he visits from time to time. In May of this year the choirs gave the first performance of Rejoice in the Lord alway, for four choirs, organ, and handbells. Another of his recent compositions, At the round earth’s imagined corners, a choral setting of a religious sonnet by English Renaissance poet John Donne, had its U.S. premiere in Chicago with the St. Charles Singers. Moore has received a variety of honors and awards, the most recent being an honorary doctorate from the University of York. He is organist emeritus of York Minster and president elect of the Royal College of Organists.
The judges for this competition included Sarah Baldock, Organist and Master of the Choristers, Chichester Cathedral, U.K.; Judith Bingham, Composer; Sarah MacDonald, Fellow and Director of Music, Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Director, Ely Cathedral Girls’ Choir; and John Scott, Organist and Director of Music, Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. Entries were coordinated by former Saint Thomas music librarian Judith Moore to ensure anonymity of composers throughout the process.
Congratulations to the two winners, and many thanks to all who participated. The winning compositions will be sung at Evensong during the Summer Course in 2015.
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