PIERRE JALBERT AWARDED 2006-07 STOEGER PRIZE

At a special award ceremony at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Monday, March 20, composer Pierre Jalbert was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize for Composition. The Stoeger Prize is a $25,000 cash award given every two years in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory. Mr. Jalbert accepted the award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Co-Artistic Director Wu Han at the ceremony, which was hosted by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Programs Bruce Adolphe.

Pierre Jalbert

The event, which included an interview with Mr. Jalbert and a live performance of a representative work by the Escher Quartet, was recorded for national radio distribution by the WFMT Radio Network.

The Stoeger Prize for composers of chamber music was established by a generous gift from Milan Stoeger as a memorial to his wife, Elise, and in gratitude for the music that had been one of the principal joys of their lives. The Prize is awarded in recognition of achievement in the field of chamber music composition rather than for a specific work.

PIERRE JALBERT served as Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 2002 - 2005 and is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music in Houston. He has received numerous awards for his compositions, including the Rome Prize, the BBC Masterprize, a Guggenheim fellowship, BMI and ASCAP Awards, a Society of Composer's Award, and the Bearns Prize in Composition.

His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and abroad, including four Carnegie Hall performances of his orchestral works, one of the most recent being the Houston Symphony’s premiere of his orchestral work, big sky, in January, 2006.
 The London Symphony Orchestra performed his In Aeternam at the Barbican Centre in London as part of the BBC's Masterprize Competition in 2001, in which he received first prize. He has also been commissioned and performed by violinist Midori, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Ying Quartet, the Seattle Symphony, Albany Symphony, Vermont Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, the Fischer Duo, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Zeitgeist, Network for New Music, and the Maia, Enso, and Chiara String Quartets, among others. He has also served as Composer-in-Residence with the California Symphony and Music in the Loft in Chicago. His music is published by Theodore Presser Company and he is a member of Musiqa, a Houston new music group.
Current projects include a new work for the Maia String Quartet and an orchestral work commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Magnum Opus Project for three California orchestras who will each perform the work over the next three years (the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, and the Marin Symphony).

Current projects include a new work for the Maia String Quartet and an orchestral work commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Magnum Opus Project for three California orchestras who will each perform the work over the next three years (the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, and the Marin Symphony).