Western Front New Music Wins Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award

The $60,000 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award for Music will go to Western Front New Music to fund its new work Music from the New Wilderness. The work will premiere at The Cultch in February 2014. The announcement was made last night at the opening performance of the play Extraction, last year's winner.

The Western Front supports the evolution of contemporary music practice, which blurs genre boundaries from classical to experimental music and embraces diverse musical literacies from score-based composition to electronica and noise.

Administered by The Cultch, The Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award was conceived to recognize the achievements of British Columbia performing arts companies and to foster the creation of new work by providing a significant financial investment in a new production by the chosen company.

The Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award rotates annually between Dance, Theatre, and Opera/Music (note that no company may apply more than once in any three-year cycle).

Previous award winners have included Kidd Pivot for Lost Action, The Hard Rubber Orchestra for Enter-Exit, Modern Baroque Opera Company for 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade, battery opera for Cyclops, Boca del Lupo for The Suicide, and The Holy Body Tattoo for Circa.