Western Front New Music nabs Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award

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      This year's $60,000 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award is going to Western Front New Music.

      The money will go to its new work Music from the New Wilderness, which will have its premiere at The Cultch in February 2014. The announcement was made last night at the opening performance of the play Extraction, last year's winner.

      Music from the New Wilderness is to express themes of culture, remoteness, and British Columbia’s vanishing wilderness experience. It will include archival wax cylinder recordings from the Okanagan's Upper Nicola Band and field recordings of the disappearing sounds of the “settler experience” from the Broughton Archipelago.

      The piece will be a collaborative work by composers, acoustic ecologists, and artists Jesse Zubot , Krista Belle Stewart,
      Christian Calon, Jennifer Schine, Adam Basanta, and Alicia Hansen.

      Western Front New Music operates out of the artist-run centre it's named for, and focuses on promoting contemporary music through residencies, concerts, recordings, and more. 

      The Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award is administered by The Cultch, and the competition for it rotates annually among the
      disciplines of dance, theatre , and music/opera. An independent panel of artistic professionals adjudicates the award.

      Previous winners have included The Holy Body Tattoo's Circa, Kidd Pivot's Lost Action, Wen Wei Dance's Cock-Pit, and Electric Company Theatre's Dona Flor and her Two Husbands.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Frank Cornelius

      Mar 6, 2013 at 1:59pm

      Will professional artists ever get the courage to stop laundering money for corporate criminals?

      "Rio Tinto's operations dump gold and copper mine tailings into the Ajkwa River at Grasberg, West Papua, into the Cassidaigne Canyon in the Mediterranean Sea, and into Carol Lake near its iron ore mine in Labrador ..." from a 2012 report produced by Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada.

      <http://www.earthworksaction.org/files/publications/Troubled-Waters_RioTi...

      Leigh McCracken

      Mar 7, 2013 at 10:30am

      So you roast your dinner on a wood stick, boil water in a leaf, and walk barefoot? who in the world do you think buys/uses all the metals produced by mines? can you spell hypocrite?