Please join us in congratulating Robyn Jacob and Andys Skordis, the composers selected for our 2019/20 Emerging Composers Partnership! We look forward to collaborating with both Robyn and Andys to create new works by each, which will be premiered next season. Read more about these outstanding music-makers below and click their names above to hear some of their music.

We received 109 applications this year! The remarkable variety and depth of creativity displayed by all of the proposals was truly inspiring, and we have no doubt that adventurous music in our field is alive and well! Thank you to everyone who submitted music and ideas this year.

Applications for the next round of submissions to the Emerging Composers Partnership (projects to be completed in the 2020/21 season) will open on August 1 and will close on October 31, 2019. 

Robyn Jacob is a pianist, singer, composer and educator who lives and works on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver BC). She has been striving for beauty that defies category in Canada and internationally with her avant-pop project Only A Visitor, who released their second full length album Technicolour Education in early 2019. Committed to writing and performing avant-garde music, recent composition projects explore writing for voice and small ensemble, and balancing between the pop and new music realms. As a music educator she believes in discovery through teaching, and learning through discovery, and has taught youth workshops on free improvisation and deep listening.

Since 2012 she has been part of the multi-disciplinary arts collective Publik Secrets, currently artists in residence at the Hadden Park Field House with the City of Vancouver. In 2013 she toured Bali with Gamelan Gita Asmara, and has since been co-directing Gamelan Bike Bike. For four years she was host of The Rib on CiTR 101.9FM, a show dedicated to the dissemination of local experimental musical talent. Robyn has received a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of British Columbia, and has completed three residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has been teaching music and piano privately for over 10 years.

Andys Skordis is a Cypriot composer, born in Nicosia in 1983. He graduated from Berklee College of Music where he studied composition and film scoring, and pursued his post-graduate studies in composition with Richard Ayres and Wim Henderickx at the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam. Additionally, he studied Karnatic music with Dr. Rafael Reina and Balinese Gamelan at ISI Denpasar in Bali.

As a composer he finds inspiration in the primordial human nature, which is reflected through a contemporary methodology in his compositions. His recent works find stimulation from ceremonial and mystical happenings from around the world. These incentives are expressed as a representation of a contemporary ritual characterised by tension and mysticism in his music.

Andys has composed music ranging from opera, orchestral and chamber pieces, vocal works, Gamelan, as well as music for theatre, dance and short films. His music has been performed by professional ensembles and amateur groups worldwide, in concert halls and unconventional spaces like quarries, abandoned buildings, temples, floating stages, and so on. Additionally, he has been awarded with various prizes including the Buma Toonzetters Prize, one of the highest composition prizes in The Netherlands, and more.

Besides composing, he is currently teaching Contemporary Music through non Western techniques at the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, as well as other foundations in Europe, Asia and America. Additionally, he is the artistic director of the ensemble Patsiaoura, the music curator for Xarkis Festival and Artists Residency, a founding member of the improvisational ensemble The Brain Masturbation, and a professional collaborator with the Greek National Opera, and is involved in interdisciplinary projects and educational workshops.

Third Coast Percussion’s Emerging Composers Partnership is made possible by Louise K. Smith and the Sargent Family Foundation.

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