IFCM….In Brief

Composer Matt Van Brink, outright winner of the First IFCM Competition for Choral Composition in 2010, remains thrilled to have worked with Grete Pedersen and the World Youth Choir in Oslo on the occasion of the Nobel Prize Awards in December 2011. He is currently a Fall 2012 Artist Fellow at the Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, where he is composing a song cycle for the Olson-De Cari Duo to texts by scientists of our times. Matt served as composer-not-in-residence for San Francisco Choral Artists during the 2011/12 season and composed several new works for them. As a Resident Composer at Concordia Conservatory in New York, he continues to compose ambitious new works of chamber music and musical theater for young performers, and he is pleased to have “murdered the classics” in arrangements for a new album released this past winter by the inimitable Polkastra. Immediately after winning the competition, he was signed by the German publisher Hayo Music, which released several recent works for choir as well as two volumes of new repertoire for young string players, ‘Strings Attached’. All in all, the prize would seem to have provided at least a measure of impetus for the composer’s career. We will continue to watch this space.