Azrieli Music Prizes to premiere four new works in Montréal
Four composers will have new works premiered by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and OSM Chorus at the 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert, as the Azrieli Foundation continues its substantial investment in contemporary composition.
The Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre will present the sixth biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) Gala Concert at the Maison symphonique de Montréal on 15 October 2026.
Conducted by Asher Fisch, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and OSM Chorus will give the premieres of works by the four 2026 AMP laureates: Hana Ajiashvili, Nicholas Denton Protsack, Adrian Mocanu and Dalit Hadass Warshaw.
The 2026 competition cycle focuses on music for choir, symphony orchestra and soloists, returning to the same broad instrumentation used for the first AMP Gala Concert in 2016.
Soloists for the concert include sopranos Hila Baggio and Hila Plitmann, baritone Noam Heinz and cellist Ariel Barnes, alongside viol ensemble Les Voix humaines. The concert will also be streamed free through Medici.tv, Amadeus.tv, The Violin Channel and the Azrieli Music Prizes YouTube channel.
Created in 2014 by Sharon Azrieli for the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial prizes support the discovery, creation, performance and recording of contemporary concert music.
Each of the four 2026 laureates receives a prize package valued at more than CAD 250,000, including a CAD 50,000 cash award, the Montréal premiere, two subsequent international performances and a commercial studio recording of the winning work.
Sharon Azrieli said the 2026 programme brought the prizes ‘full circle’ 12 years after their creation.
‘Our very first AMP Gala Concert in 2016 showcased two compositions for orchestra, choir and soloists, and we are returning to that exact instrumentation ten years later,’ she said.
Mélanie La Couture, President and CEO of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, described the prizes as ‘a truly vital source of support for contemporary voices in classical music’.
The four works explore markedly different subjects.
Hana Ajiashvili, winner of the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, has reorchestrated her 2022 work Riddle, setting a text by the 12th-century poet Yehuda Halevi.
Adrian Mocanu’s de l'encra escafada (‘from faded ink’), commissioned through the Azrieli Commission for International Music, draws on the legacy of the trobairitz – female troubadours of medieval France whose music has largely disappeared.
Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s Letter from Across the River, commissioned through the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, is based on the story of her great-grandfather in Nazi-occupied Poland and combines that family history with the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel.
Canadian composer Nicholas Denton Protsack’s Height of Land, for orchestra, chorus and solo cello, takes its title from the cartographical term for the natural divides shaping Canada’s geography and explores relationships between land, water and human presence.
AMP is open to the international music community, with nominations and proposals considered by expert juries. The organisation describes its four prize packages as the largest composition awards of their kind in Canada and among the most substantial internationally.
The programme represents a significant long-term philanthropic commitment by the Azrieli Foundation to contemporary music, extending beyond direct financial awards to commissioning, professional performance, recording and international exposure for composers.