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Andrew Norman Wins the 2017 Grawemeyer Award

Nov. 23, 2016

Andrew Norman Wins the 2017 Grawemeyer Award

Schott Music is thrilled to announce that Andrew Norman has been named the winner of the prestigious 2017 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his large-scale orchestral work Play.

In three movements, Play explores the relationship of choice and chance, free will and control. It investigates the ways musicians in an orchestra can play with, against, or apart from one another; and maps concepts from the world of video gaming onto traditional symphonic structures to tell a fractured narrative of power, manipulation, deceit and, ultimately, cooperation.

Grawemeyer Award Director Marc Satterwhite remarks:

“Play combines brilliant orchestration, which is at once wildly inventive and idiomatic, with a terrific and convincing musical shape based on a relatively small amount of musical source material. It ranges effortlessly from brash to intimate and holds the listener’s interest for all of its 47 minutes—no small feat in these days of shortened attention spans.” 
 

Schott Music is deeply proud of our own Andrew Norman, whose music we have published exclusively worldwide since 2007. Norman Ryan, Vice President of Composers & Repertoire, comments: 

“Andrew's unique voice is a quintessential marriage of the contemporary times we live in with the structure of classical forms handed down through the ages. From his earliest pieces such as Sacred Geometry and Gran Turismo through to Play, his most ambitious work to date, Andrew's voice is one we have always believed will resonate long into the future and we are thrilled that Play has been recognized with this well deserved honor.” 


Play was commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with funding from Music Alive, a national residency program of the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project performed the piece’s premiere in 2013, and released a recording on its own label.  Since then, the piece has garnered considerable attention and critical acclaim. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and critic and musicologist William Robin said it “might be the best orchestral work that the twenty-first century has seen thus far. In October, the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of Play in its revised form. 

For more information on the Grawemeyer Award, visit grawemeyer.org. 

Andrew Norman
Play (2013, rev. 2016)
for orchestra
3(2.,3.pic).2.ca.3(3.ebcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.3.2.tbtn.1-4perc(I. vib [with bow], 4bng, 5tempbl, 3 splash cym, 5 tin cans, brake d, kick d, washboard [possibly shared with perc 3], tam-t, slapstick [very large]; II. crot [with bow], 5 log d, 4 opera gongs, 4 sm tom-t, spring coil, tri, guiro, tub bells [shared with perc 4]; III. xylo, 4wdbl, 5 cow bells, kick d, ratchet, washboard [possibly shared with perc 1], slapstick [very large], b.d [shared with perc 4], glsp [shared with perc 4]; IV. vib [with bow], 4 sus cym, glsp [shared with perc 3], b.d, sand paper blocks, b.d [shared with perc 3], tub bells [shared with perc 2])-pno-str(16.14.12.10.8)
47' 

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