The Fifth Annual Roberta Stephen Fund Recipients

Alexandra Fol (Montréal) and Hyun Hee Deborah Park (Burlington) are the 2021 recipients of support from the Roberta Stephen Fund. 

Alexandra Fol

Hyun Hee Deborah Park

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

Dr. Alexandra Fol, composer, pianist, organist and conductor, whose work has been performed by the Sofia Symphony Orchestra, the McGill Symphony, and the New Score Chamber Orchestra, and appears on CDs released by Disques Benedictus (Canada) and Gutenberg Publishing (Bulgaria). Her award will support the composition of a new work, Opposing the Motion, for large ensemble and voice, written at the invitation of El Perro Andaluz, an ensemble based in Dresden, Germany. Opposing the Motion is a setting of former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s famous 2012 anti-misogyny speech.

Hyun Hee Deborah Park is a performer/composer/conductor who has won numerous honours as a pianist, including the 2017 Concert Artists International Virtuoso Competition. She is the recipient of a Roberta Stephen Fund Bursary to support her studies with Dr. Thomas Reynolds exploring the connections between jazz and spirituality with a view to developing creative ways to reimagine personal and communal flourishing. She will explore jazz as an art form of resilience; in James Cone’s words, a manifestation of “the will to be, despite nonbeing as symbolized in racism and hate.”