Pinnacle of Modern Choral Music at the Azrieli Music Prizes

For the tenth year running, the Azrieli Foundation celebrated the four winning composers of the 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes at the Maison symphonique on Monday, whose beautiful works for choir and instrumental ensemble evoked the Jewish soul and metaphysics in a contemporary context.

Hosted by the foundation’s initiator, singer and generous patron Sharon Azrieli, and former CBC radio host Mario Paquette, the evening showcased the award-winning works, most of which were world premieres. OSM musicians and the OSM Chorus, under the direction of its eminent conductor Andrew Megill, performed some very special choral works.

Light to My Path, a choral fantasy for mixed choir, saxophone, percussion and piano, by Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili. Each of the piece’s five movements combines different ensemble configurations: a cappella men’s choir, a cappella women’s choir, mixed choirs with musicians, a cappella mixed choir. Non-Jews must discover this brilliant choral approach, inspired by the sacred writings, as the vocal inclinations are unique – for example, Leonard Cohen’s album You Want It Darker , which featured some very inspired choristers.

In Light To My Path, for example, the composer maintains the sacred link , with tremendous call-and-response, canons, ornamental whistling and other compelling effects. Vocal technique is distinctly Baroque or Renaissance but also very modern at the same time. The difference with the well-known sacred songs of the Jewish tradition lies here in the modern harmonizations and instrumental accompaniment.

Secondly, composer Yair Klartag saw The Parable of the Palace,his work for choir and four double basses, as a further update on the notion of spirituality. The composer’s penchant for contemporary music, given the instrumentation chosen and the harmonization of the voices, contrasts with the primary inspiration for this Azrieli Foundation award-winning work: the parable of the palace taken from the Guide for the Perplexed by the Talmudic philosopher Moshe ben Maimon, known as Maimonides, who lived in the 12th century and spoke in the now extinct Judeo-Arabic language. Passages from this metaphysical writing attempt to draw that thin line between reason and irrationality, and would have influenced the composer’s search for universal notions in today’s context, starting with the insatiable human desire “to get closer to the divine without ever understanding it”. Notions that are nonetheless mystical, deeply traditional and clearly identity-based.

The third work on the program, Symetrias Prehispanicas, was by Mexican-American Juan Trigos, inspired by Aztec cosmology, with projected images (by brother Luciano Trigos), and 15th-century Aztec poets, both known and unknown. The songs are in Spanish and Nahuati. Here, tonality, modality and atonality cohabit even more closely, and the cross-hatching and clashing of voices and instruments is even stronger. A cantata-oratorio for mixed choir and ensemble, the work unfolds over 11 tableaux grouped into 4 distinct parts, a non-linear narrative illustrating Aztec thinking of the world before the Spanish conquistadors forcibly obliterated it, as we know. This is certainly the most up-to-date work on the program.

Last but not least, Kanata for SATB a cappella voices, composed by Canadian Jordan Nobles, was the shortest and most singular work on the Azrieli 2024 Prize program. Linear, horizontal and texturally wonderful, with subtle rhythmic shifts in the vocal motifs, this work is a “sonic meditation on notions of place, landscape and home”. A cross-Canada train journey is said to have inspired the composer to create this succinct and so original choral gem.