G. Schirmer & Associated Music Publishers, part of the Wise Music Group, is proud to announce the winner of the 2022 G. Schirmer Prize for Luna Composition Lab: Alicia Erlandson, for her string quintet Windowpane.
Inaugurated in 2019, the G. Schirmer Prize offers mentorship and recognition for select works by composers participating in Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid’s program for young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers (ages 12-18). Now in its seventh season, Luna Composition Lab provides aspiring young composers with a year of one-on-one mentorship, performance opportunities, and high-quality recordings of their work. The G. Schirmer Prize is an annual award, offering access to publishing industry professionals and a cash prize, as well as educational mentoring and networking opportunities, to one Luna Lab Fellow each year.
2022 G. Schirmer Prize Winner
Alicia Erlandson (age 18) is a flautist and composer based in Bronx, New York. She has studied flute since 2014, and composition since 2020. Alicia was a fellow for the MATA Jr. Festival, Wildflower Composers Program, the Great Plains Composers Workshop, and Luna Lab. She is currently an undergraduate student at The New School’s Mannes School of Music, pursuing a B.M. in Music Composition and studying with Missy Mazzoli. Cincinnati’s May Festival commissioned a choral work from Erlandson, to be premiered in spring 2023, for the festival’s “25 for 25: A New Time for Choral Music” commissioning project with Luna Composition Lab.
On her composition Windowpane, the composer writes: "In most bird feathers you see, their color comes from pigmentation (like paint, or the melanin in your skin); however, some feathers are colored by their structure. This is what inspired Windowpane. The color blue, for instance, is made by a sheet of air pockets in the feather that reflect blue from all angles. Green is the same, but with a layer of yellow melanin underneath the air pockets. Feathers that vary in color depending on the viewing angle, or iridescent feathers, are composed of keratin layers that refract light as it passes through, like prisms do. The best examples of this are the throat feathers of many hummingbird species. With this piece, I hope to emulate the vision of these colors and their structures."
Listen to Windowpane
“Alicia Erlandson's piece Windowpane dazzled us when it premiered at the 2022 Luna Composition Lab Festival. It was immediately apparent that Alicia is an artist with an unfettered imagination, a composer capable of creating textured, delicate and surprising soundscapes that reflect her own unique take on the world. We’re thrilled to have her in the Luna Composition Lab community and are very happy that she has been awarded this year’s Schirmer Prize.”
- Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid
“It's a great pleasure to recognize Alicia Erlandson and her piece Windowpane with this year's Schirmer Prize. We thoroughly enjoyed the discovery of her work and talent. Though her inspiration of bird feathers imbues the score with a sense of wonder - the composition also enchants with its own purely musical merits. We appreciate how her ideas evolve gradually, keeping the listener engaged and curious to follow their path through the entirety of the composition.”
- Peggy Monastra, Senior Promotion Advisor, G. Schirmer & Associated Music Publishers
About Luna Composition Lab
Luna Composition Lab’s mission is to close the gender gap in the field of music composition. Founded in 2016 by composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, Luna Composition Lab provides mentorship and resources for young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers. Luna Composition Lab is the only initiative of its kind in the United States. It has achieved national recognition as a program that not only celebrates underrepresented voices but also shapes music’s future by providing a support system for continued success. Luna Composition Lab’s signature program—the Luna Lab Fellowship—offers six young composers one-on-one mentorship with acclaimed professional composers annually. Mentors guide fellows in the composition of a new piece of music that is premiered by a professional ensemble as part of a weeklong festival in New York City. In addition, Luna Composition Lab offers a series of group composition courses—Adventures in Sound—that support young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming musicians who are interested in creating their own music. Alumni of the fellowship program have gone on to receive national awards, attend the nation’s top colleges and conservatories, and have been commissioned by renowned chamber ensembles and orchestras.
About G. Schirmer
Part of Wise Music Group international network of publishing houses, G. Schirmer, Inc. is the oldest continuously active North American classical music publisher. Through its international network of publishing houses, including Chester Music, Edition Wilhelm Hansen, Alphonse Leduc, and Novello, the Group represents works by many of the most important creators from the 20th and 21st centuries, including Samuel Barber, Daniel Catán, John Corigliano, Donnacha Dennehy, Ludovico Einaudi, Duke Ellington, Julius Eastman, Gabriela Lena Frank, Charles Ives, Gian Carlo Menotti, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Sergei Prokofiev, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dmitri Shostakovich Sarah Kirkland Snider Snider, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Joan Tower, and John Tavener.