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| BATON ROUGE – William Price, a 2004 graduate of the LSU School of Music, was recently announced as the winner of the 2008 Music Teachers National Association-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year Award. The honor makes Price the fourth first-place winner in the MTNA Composition Contest from LSU in the last decade. “It is a great privilege and honor to be selected as this year’s Music Teachers National Association-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year,” Price said. “It means a great deal to me that the MTNA and its state affiliates continue to support the creation of so many new works.” According to information from the MTNA Web site, the MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year Award is given to the composer of the outstanding composition submitted as a state-commissioned work. Winning compositions are placed in the MTNA Commissioned Works Library, housed in the Music Library at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Price received the honor for his composition, “Hardboiled (Red Harvest),” which was selected from among 25 works entered in this year’s competition. “Hardboiled (Red Harvest)” is a single movement work scored for clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, percussion and piano. The composition premiered at the Alabama Music Teachers Association State Conference, held June 12, 2008, at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Ala. The piece was inspired by the crime fiction of author Dashiell Hammett and the iconic visual imagery associated with 1940s film noir, including the interplay of light and shadow, the use of distorted camera angles and disjunctive narrative techniques such as flashbacks and flash-forwards, and the obligatory car chase. The judges for this year’s award process included Richard Festinger, a member of the composition faculty of San Francisco State University; Don Freund, professor of composition at the Indiana State University School of Music; and John McDonald, associate professor of music at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. McDonald received the MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year Award in 2007. With the honor, Price receives a $3,000 award made possible by MTNA benefactor Sylvia Shepherd. Price’s work is also scheduled to be performed during the 2009 MTNA National Conference in Atlanta. The performance is scheduled for Sunday, March 29, from 2:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in the Roswell Room of the Westin Peachtree Plaza. In addition to the performance, MTNA invited Price to present an hour-long composition master class during the conference. The class, scheduled for Monday, March 30, from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the International Rooms D, E and F of the Westin Peachtree Plaza, would have Price working with the winners of the MTNA Student Composition Competitions. Price also received an invitation to attend the MTNA Awards Brunch on Wednesday, April 1, at 10:30 a.m. in the Plaza Ballroom of the Westin Peachtree Plaza. Price — a native of Knob Noster, Mo., who now resides in Birmingham, Ala. — received his master’s degree in music and a doctorate in musical arts from the LSU School of Music, where he also served as a teaching assistant up to his graduation. He is currently an assistant professor of music theory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with his current research focusing on the use of temporal disruption and its effect on the progress of the musical narrative. “As it relates to the work, I explore three concepts usually associated with discursive semantics: the brief, yet violent ‘interjection,’ the extended ‘interruption’ and the longer musical ‘digression,’” Price said. “It was my aim to create an energetic and engaging piece that focuses on the juxtaposition of dissimilar tempi, texture, and timbre, yet somehow maintains a sense of continuity and direction.” As a master’s and doctoral graduate of LSU, Price said he believes the university’s music composition program “prepared me quite well” for a career in musical education. “My primary teacher and mentor at LSU was Dinos Constantinides,” Price said. “A wonderful composer, he not only he taught me the importance of craftsmanship and specificity of artistic intent, but also the importance of a consistent work ethic. A strong guide in my development, I owe most of my musical education to Dr. Constantinides. I consider myself lucky to be associated with the LSU School of Music.” MTNA is a nonprofit organization of nearly 24,000 independent and collegiate music teachers committed to furthering the art of music through teaching, performance, composition and scholarly research. Founded in 1876, MTNA is the oldest professional music teachers’ association in the United States. For more information on Price, visit home.earthlink.net/~williamprice1. For more information about MTNA or the MTNA National Conference, contact the MTNA national headquarters at 513-421-1420 or 1-888-512-5278, e-mail mtnanet@mtna.org or visit www.mtna.org. For more information on the LSU School of Music, call 225-578-3261 or visit http://www.music.lsu.edu. |
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