Vancouver New Music, a group that fosters creation and performance of contemporary music, has won the $60,000 Alcan Performing Arts Award.

The award, which rotates annually among music, theatre and dance, will enable the music society to create a set of compositions based on the works of author and visual artist Roy Kiyooka.

Vancouver New Music's managing producer Jim Smith accepts the Alcan Performing Arts Award for Music 2008.
(Vancouver East Cultural Centre)

Artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi plans to use the money to commission four B.C. composers — Hildegard Westerkamp, Jocelyn Morlock, Stefan Smulovitz and Stefan Udell — to write pieces based on Kiyooka's work.

Born in Moose Jaw, Sask., to a Japanese-Canadian family, Kiyooka was a painter, sculptor, photographer, musician, filmmaker and poet. His book, Pear Tree Poems, was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award in 1988.

His avant-garde work examines freedom of expression and the beauty of everyday objects. Kiyooka died on Jan. 4, 1994 at age 68.

Performers of the finished work, to be called Counterpoints, will include violinists Joan Blackman, Marc Destrubé and Rebecca Whitling, cellist Peggy Lee, violist David Harding and performance poet Kedrick James.

The work is scheduled to be performed in 2008.

Vancouver New Music, founded in 1973, presents and produces experimental new music and contemporary sonic art.

It plays an annual concert season, mounts a week-long new music festival in Vancouver, and has commissioned works from dozens of Canadian composers.

The Alcan Performing Arts Award, administered by the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, is a $60,000 production fund open to performing arts companies resident in British Columbia. 

Last year's award allowed Neworldtheatre to present the new play Adrift on the Nile.