Announcing the first winners of the Roberta Stephen Composition Award:

Canadian composers Emily Doolittle (Scotland) and Rita Ueda (Vancouver) are the first recipients of the Roberta Stephen Composition award.

The Roberta Stephen Award offers support to a Canadian woman composer aged 36 or older for professional development such as further studies, conferences, or workshops, or composers’ festivals. The prize was established by Calgary composer and publisher Roberta Stephen and is administered by the Association of Canadian Women Composers.

Emily Doolittle was educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. She has taught composition and theory at Cornish College of the Arts and now lives in Glasgow, UK. Doolittle’s other honours include the 2012 Theodore Front Prize, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and the Bearn’s Prize. Doolittle’s music has been characterized as “organically modern tonal.” The award will assist her with the cost of travel to the UK prèmiere of her orchestral work green/blue, performed in Hereford by the English Symphony Orchestra eso.co.uk.

Rita Ueda studied at Simon Fraser University and California Institute of the Arts, and currently teaches theory at SFU. Ueda was awarded the 2nd prize in the 2010 Mahler International Composition Competition and the first prize in the 2014 Penderecki International Composers’ Competition. Her works have been featured on the 2012 and 2015 ISCM Canadian Selection CD, and her As the Snowflakes Return to the Sky for string orchestra will be performed at the 2016 ISCM World Music Days in Tongyeong, South Korea. She will use the award funds to workshop a new work for Naomi Sato, who plays sho in the Atlas Ensemble http://www.atlasensemble.nl/news.html, and to attend the Atlas Lab at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. For further information contact Janet Danielson jrd@sfu.ca