Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
The Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre (AMACC) today announced the recipients of the 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP), which celebrate excellence in music composition.
The instrumentation category for the 2026 competition is works for choir with orchestra and optional soloists.
Three of the awards go to new commissions, while one, the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, goes to the composer of an extant piece that deserves wider recognition. The 2026 AMP for Jewish Music went to Georgian-Israeli composer Hana Ajiashvili for her 2022 work Riddle. The piece transforms a medieval riddle by poet Yehuda Halevi into a meditation on persecution and resilience.
American composer, pianist and thereminist Dalit Hadass Warshaw received the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music. This award goes to a composer who excels at engaging with the question, “What is Jewish music?” Her proposed work Letter From Across the River is inspired by the true story of her great-grandfather in war-torn Poland, who braved wintry waters to send a last letter to his sons.
The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music went to New Zealand-based Canadian composer and cellist Nicholas Denton Protsack, who will re-imagine Canadian music through a lens of environmental consciousness in his proposed work, Height of Land. The piece will create a sound world where land, water and voice converge in a living musical ecosystem.
Adrian Mocanu won the Azrieli Commission for International Music. This prize goes to a composer who “engages deeply in an interplay of cultures meaningful to their lived experience.” His proposed work, “de l’encra escafada” (“from faded ink”), will resurrect the lost voices of the trobairitz – the female troubadours of medieval Provence.
About the Azrieli Music Prizes
Created in 2014 by Dr. Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes offers opportunities for discovering, creating, performing and celebrating excellence in music composition. Open to the international music community, AMP accepts nominations for works from individuals and institutions of all ages, nationalities, faiths and genders, which are then submitted to its expert juries through an open call for scores and proposals.
Now valued at CAD 250,000 per laureate, the AMP prize packages make them Canada’s top music composition competition and one of the world’s largest. The package includes a cash award of CAD 50,000; a performance of their work by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and OSM Chorus, conducted by Asher Fisch, at the AMP Gala Concert on October 15, 2026; two subsequent international performances; and a commercial recording of their prize-winning work, also featuring the OSM.
