Kelly-Marie Murphy, pictured here with Artistic Director Simon Fryer, has been awarded this year’s Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. Her winning composition titled Coffee Will be Served in the LivingRoom, for 8 cellos, was commissioned by the WMCT, and premiered on May 3, 2018 at CelloDrama!, in Music in the Afternoon‘s 120th season.
The prize, administered by the Canada Council, was established in 1978 by the Right Honourable Jules Léger, then Governor General of Canada.
Other WMCT-commissioned composers who have won this prize are Christos Hatzis, Chris Paul Harman, and Zosha di Castri.
The final concert, from May 3 2018, in the 120th season of Music in the Afternoon was broadcast on CBC Radio 2 In Concert, Sunday May 27 (11 am – 3 pm, 94.1 in Toronto).
Tom Wiebe, above on the left in slightly more formal concert wear, rehearsed in the hockey sweater of his home-town Winnipeg Jets.
The brand-new work was Coffee will be Served inthe Living Room, a miniature symphonic poem for all 8 cellos, on an episode in the life of Jackson Pollock. Commissioned composer Kelly-Marie Murphy bowed to a happy crowd
Special thanks to Alice Kim, a former student of Simon’s and ultimate rescuer, stepping in to learn the music only a few days earlier, replacing a performer faced with a health crisis.
Music in the Afternoon has just become a performing arts partner in the Cultural Access Pass (CAP) program. CAP is available to all new Canadians over 18, following their citizenship ceremony, and lasts for one year. It’s a year of free admission to more than 1,400 Canadian museums, art galleries, and historical sites, plus opportunities to attend concerts, dance and other events by performing arts partners right across Canada.
CAP is delivered by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), a national charity co-founded in 2006 by WMCT Patron the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul. ICC programs and projects inspire inclusion, and the practice of active citizenship, including ownership of our collective culture and spaces.