Jean Coulthard Readings and Mentorship Program
About the Program:
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Otto Tausk are pleased to present the 2023/2024 Jean Coulthard Readings and Mentorship Program. This year we will be introducing a NEW and expanded format that will span from October 2023 – May 2024.
The Jean Coulhard Readings were started by Rodney Sharman in 1997, to provide a learning opportunity for Vancouver’s student composers, and for the VSO to discover new musical voices.
Named in honour of one of BC’s most beloved composers, the Jean Coulthard Readings and Mentorship Program gives emerging BC composers an invaluable opportunity to develop their orchestral writing under the guidance of the VSO and have their work read by a professional orchestra. Approximately six early-career composers will be selected to participate in the program.
If you have any questions, please email education@vancouversymphony.ca.
Meet the Mentor Composer
Edward Top
“Horror composer Edward Top acted as a kind of snake, hypnotizing listeners as frightened little bunnies” is what Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant wrote 25 years ago. As part of Vancouver’s kaleidoscopic music scene since 2010, Top’s music has been identified by The Vancouver Sun as “earthy neo-primitivism” and “a dreamlike expression of (…) the collective unconscious” by the Georgia Straight.
Top studied composition and violin at the Rotterdam Conservatory and, after working and traveling in the Far East for several years, continued studies at King’s College London. Edward has been Head of Composition at the Vancouver Academy of Music since 2014, and served as Composer-in-Residence with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra working with conductors Bramwell Tovey and Otto Tausk. Holland Symfonia, Schoenberg Ensemble, Tokyo Sinfonietta, among others, performed his compositions, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra recently premiered the commissioned work Eruption on tour in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto.
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