After carefully examining 22 entries from 5 provinces through a blind adjudication process, our jury has selected the Grand Prize winner of Chronos Vocal Ensemble’s fourth annual composition competition.
The winning entry is A Little More Time by Waterloo, ON-based composer Leonard Enns!
Many thanks to our jurors: Jean-Sebastian-Vallée (Montreal, QC), Rachel Rensink-Hoff (St. Catherine’s, ON) and Leonard Ratzlaff (Edmonton, AB) who worked together with Jordan Van Biert to evaluate the anonymous entries.
Composer and conductor Leonard Enns is Professor Emeritus at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, Ontario where he taught in the Music Department and served in various administrative roles for over three and a half decades. He is the founding director of the national award-winning DaCapo Chamber Choir, established in 1998. The choir has been repeated winner or finalist in several editions of the National Choral Competition, and has recorded three CDs: Still (2004), ShadowLand (2009) and NewWorks (2018); Enns’ music is included on the first two recordings. He has produced a significant body of compositions ranging from vocal and instrumental solo works to major works for full choral/orchestral forces. His half-hour composition for choir, strings, and solo oboe, This Thirsty Land, received the 2020 Choral Canada Outstanding Choral Composition Award. His I Saw Eternity is the title track on the eponymous 2013 JUNO nominated CD by the Elora Festival Singers on the Naxos label. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, E.C. Schirmer, Galaxy Music, Gordon V Thompson/Warner Chappell, Gentry, Cypress Choral Music and other publishers, and self-published under the label Monarda Music.
We thank the participating composers for their many diverse and excellent entries, and we look forward to working with Leonard and premiering his composition later this year.
Special thanks to our anonymous donor whose contributions have funded prizes for this and three prior iterations of this annual competition, resulting in premiere performances of wonderful new Canadian works by Chronos Vocal Ensemble each year.
Photo credit: DaCapo Chamber Choir