5TH PETER ROSSER COMPOSITION AWARD
We are pleased to announce Anita Mawhinney as the Winner of the 5th Peter Rosser Composition award 2021.
Congratulations to Anita Mawhinney and to our two finalists Samantha McCoy and Kevin Terry!
If you missed the final of our 5th Peter Rosser Composition Awards, you have another chance to hear Anita's winning work, Dark Measures, this season, which will be performed as part of our 'Schoenberg Revisited' concert, in a collaborative project with Maiden Voyage Dance.
Similarly, Samantha McCoy's shortlisted work Cai Susah will be performed as part of our homage to Iannis Xenakis in our 'Xenakis at 100' concert and Kevin Terry's shortlisted work Coil through grass will be performed in our annual concert of brand new works Ink Still Wet 5.
Anita Mawhinney
Anita Mawhinney was born in Manchester in 1974. She has family origins in England and India. She has lived in Northern Ireland for twenty-one years and she lives close to the sea in Helen’s Bay, County Down with her husband and two young children. She has taught piano and harmony at Queen’s University, Belfast, for eighteen years. She is a sought after piano teacher and manages a private piano teaching business in North Down.
She has always had an interest in composition and this has become more pronounced over the last two years. Her experience has mostly been in choral composition and in choral and instrumental arranging. She was recently chosen as a finalist in the Peter Rosser Composition Award for the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, for her piece Dark Measures.
Anita studied music at Wadham College, Oxford with Edward Olleson and at York University with Bruce Cole. Her influences range from medieval plainchant to contemporary music and she also has interests in jazz, electronic and world music. As well as piano, Anita has diplomas in voice, clarinet and theory. She began teaching herself the duduk during the second lockdown. She has sung in the widely acclaimed Belfast-based chamber choir, Cappella Caeciliana, for twelve years. Her non-musical interests include hiking, fine dining and tropical travel.
Samantha McCoy
Samantha McCoy was born in 1997 and is currently a Postgraduate student at Queen’s University, undertaking a Masters of Research in composition. She studied Music Technology and Sonic Arts at Queen’s, at undergraduate level. During this time she took composition modules with Simon Mawhinney, Piers Hellawell, Simon Waters and Pedro Rebelo. She is also a cellist and has performed in The Great Hall at Queen’s as part of the Queen’s University Symphony Orchestra and also in the Sonic Lab in SARC. Her music is informed by mid-twentieth century European modernism and she also has a keen interest in spectral music. She is currently preparing to complete her portfolio of work for her Masters of Research, under the supervision of Simon Mawhinney.
Kevin Terry
Kevin Terry is a composer and performer whose work spans a variety of contexts. As a performer he has toured Europe numerous times and as a composer his work has been performed by Catherine Pluygers, Kate Ellis, Andrew Zolinsky and the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble. His music been released on record labels in Ireland and the UK. In 2019 he was awarded the Jerome Hynes Young Composers Award and was commissioned to compose a new work by the National Concert Hall. He has participated in The Deep Listening Retreat with Pauline Oliveros and is currently completing a Masters in Composition.