Don Wright Faculty of Music professor Peter Paul Koprowski is one of three Canadian composers honoured by the National Arts Council (NAC).
Taking a page from the Giller Prize that promotes Canadian literature, the NAC is ensuring that Canadian repertoire takes centre stage. Each composer will be commissioned to create three new music works for the NAC Orchestra over the next five years, and each will teach students during the NAC’s annual Summer Music Institute. The award encompasses musical commissions and residencies valued at $75,000 each.
A prolific composer, Koprowski is principally known for his orchestral works, the first of which, In Memoriam Karol Szymanowski (1963, revised 1977), is still performed.
He has worked with such ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, the Olso Philharmonic (which premiered his flute concerto in 1983), the Polish Chamber Orchestra and the NAC Orchestra.
He won the Jules Léger Prize twice, in 1989 for Sonnet for Laura and again in 1994 for his Woodwind Quintet. He was given the Canada Council’s Victor M. Lynch-Staunton Award in 1989 and in 1997 he received the Jean A. Chalmers National Music Award for his Viola Concerto and other works. The Viola Concerto, recorded by Golani, was also nominated for a Juno in 2002.
Koprowski has taught theory and composition at the University of Toronto, McGill University, and now Western, where he became co-ordinator of new music at campus concerts and conductor of the New Music Ensemble.