2024 Call for Scores Winner
Laurent Courbier
Composer and pianist Laurent Courbier is passionate about bringing together inspiring musicality and meaningful storytelling through film, TV, video games and concert music.
His work includes music for Honor of Kings, the world's most-played mobile MOBA game with 100 million daily players, Age of Empires: Return to Empire (TiMi studio) which won the 2022 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Mobile Video Game Score and TV shows such as Happy! (Netflix).
In June 2024, his score for the Chinese video game Light and Night will be performed live by star-pianist Lang Lang, for whom he specially re-arranged his work for piano and orchestra.
As an arranger, he collaborated with Nathalie Stutzmann, singer and conductor, on her album Quella Fiamma (Warner classics), bringing back arias from the 17th and 18th centuries in their most authentic form.
His love for piano improvisation led him to release in 2024 Intimate Sketches, an album entirely improvised in his studio, during the quiet hours of the morning and evening.
Laurent studied composition at the Paris Superior Conservatory where he graduated in Harmony, Counterpoint (1st prize) and Fugue (1st prize) in Thierry Escaich's class. He also graduated from the Lyon Conservatory where he got his piano degree with highest honors and studied orchestration with Guillaume Connesson.
Website: https://www.laurentcourbier.com/
About From the Chrysalis
Creatures are as interesting for what they are as how we identify with them. Coming from a family of psychotherapists, the latter part is truly what fascinates me! The poem "From the Chrysalis" written ca. 1866 by the american poet Emily Dickinson catches the essence of this identification and shows how it can be used to express our deepest emotions. It portrays brilliantly what one has to go through to become what they aim to be and this analogy with the butterfly connects us to the most profound laws of nature. The sense of direction that the poem provides is very musical as it goes from darkness to light. Therefore I decided to follow the general structure of the poem, each of the three stanzas describing a stage of the transformation: discomfort , aspiration and faith. I chose to emphasize on the last line "I take the clue divine" so I could best express this ultimate leap of faith and get a grasp of the sense of liberation one can feel after reading this poem.
2024 Call for Scores Honorable Mention
Gerson Batista
Gerson de Sousa Batista (1988), is a Portuguese composer, playwright, multi-instrumentalist, poet, theater creator and multimedia artist from Aveiro. He studied music theory, organ and vocal techniques at the Calouste Gulbenkian Music Conservatory of Aveiro, and since, has won more than 40 composition awards, published numerous books and works in both physical and digital formats, created and staged a wide variety of creations, and has been commissioned and played throughout the globe. Gerson is currently involved in the creation and staging of several multimedia theaters and musicals, staged concerts, and various instrumental and choral music projects, while regularly rotating some of his long duration Multimedia Musical Theaters, such as "Diário de uma Pandemia" (Pandemic Diary), "É com certeza uma tasca portuguesa!" (It's certainly a Portuguese tavern!), O SAXOFONE QUE FALAVA (the speaking saxophone) and "O Grande Sousini" (The Great Sousini).
He is the founder of the publishing house DESOUSA EDITIONS, and of CONSERTO PRODUCTIONS, an Artistic Collective, with headquarters in Aveiro (Portugal), for the creation, production and agency of multimedia shows, composed by music and theater performers, technicians and producers. Some of his most recent composition awards are: 1st Prize XVI Concurso Internacional de Composição da Póvoa de Varzim 2023, 1st Prize KlangArten Organ International Composition Competition 2022 (Austria), 1st Prize Composition Competition Manuel Emílio Porto 2021 (Portugal), 1st Prize International Composition Competition for Bercandeon 2021 (Italy), 1st Prize 18th Gheorghe Dima International Composition Competition 2020 (Romenia), 1st Prize Singapore International Composition Competition 2020 (Singapore), 1st Prize Cornwall International Composition Competition 2020 (UK), 1st Prize International Composition Competition Coro Universitario de Sant Yago 2019 (Spain), 1st Prize Unternehmen Gegenwart Stimmgold Vokalensemble 2019 (Germany), 1st Prize Composition Competition FOLEFEST 2018 (Portugal), 1st Prize Composition Competition Peças Frescas Açores 5th Edition 2018 (Portugal), 1st Prize Arts Competition Aveiro Jovem Criador 2018 (Portugal), 1st Prize Composition Competition for Orchestra Conservatório do Vale do Sousa (Portugal), 1st Prize Walter Hussey International Composition Competition 2018 (UK), in between others.
Website: www.gersonbatista.com
Creatures Great and Small is a musical story about resilience, dreams and perspectives of light for the future, in the midst of mist.
Its creation line used the Scheherazade Music Festival theme, "Creatures Great and small", as inspiration, which immediately led me to think about dreams, that begin to appear early on, since we remember ourselves, and which are part of our existence, throughout our lives, of beings able to see and shape the future ("Creatures great and small, dreamers in a room").
It's like we are traveling in time, somewhat, still in our own past, "Creatures great and small, Blooming dreamers, 2054!"
2024 Call for Scores Honorable Mention
Andrew Bell
Andrew S. Bell is a composer of instrumental and vocal music for the concert hall, music for independent film and multimedia, electronic mediums, and commercial use. A Kansas native with a mixed cultural heritage, his musical language has been shaped by his experience in the American Midwest and from nearly a decade of living abroad in South America.
Recent premieres of his concert work include The Birds Around Us for Pierrot Ensemble, Elegy for String Quartet, and an arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra: Group 2 No. 1. Ballad, commissioned by Russell Clark and the Kansas State University Symphony Orchestra. The Ballad was collaboratively arranged alongside his twin brother, Alan Bell. In 2023, Andrew was commissioned by Sleepy Puppy Press to compose an accompaniment for Lament, a melody by English violist and composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). Lament was premiered at Kansas State University by renowned English violinist Madeleine Mitchell.
Andrew holds a bachelor's degree from Universidad de La Sabana (Bogotá, Colombia) and a Master of Music from Kansas State University, where he studied composition under Dr. Craig Weston, jazz studies under Dr. Wayne Goins, and orchestral studies under Dr. Rachel Dirks.
About Elegía a La Muerte de Una Abeja
Elegía a La Muerte de Una Abeja (Elegy for the Death of a Bee) sets a short poem of the same title by twentieth-century Colombian poet Daniel Echeverri Jaramillo. This powerful text compares the death of a beloved bee with “the death of a sound from the musical scale... the loss of a thread from the fabric of the breeze.”
The poem evokes clear imagery and a distinct palette of musical possibilities, providing structure for a modern yet lyrical composition for the concert hall. In a mere eight lines of text, the poem touches deeply on the reality of grief from the perspective of a seemingly inconsequential creature - the honeybee. The musical work, scored for the soprano voice, flute, tenor saxophone, and piano, follows suit, conceived as a bee-like cry of lament.
Elegía a La Muerte de Una Abeja also laments the loss of natural life as a consequence of human activity and serves as a reminder of the fragility of our environment. According to the USDA, significant yearly declines in honeybee colonies have been attributed to pesticides, pollutants, habitat loss, effects of climate variability, and agricultural production intensification, amongst other factors (Nowierski, 2020). In recent years, efforts made by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and numerous publicly and privately funded organizations have proved effective, and populations of honeybees and other pollinators are returning to normal levels. I hope this musical work provides a space to consider the impacts of our society on all creatures, large and small, and the symbiotic relationship that exists between human life and the natural world.