Montreal-based composer Nicolas Gilbert is the 2008 winner of the $3,000 John Weinzweig Award, the most prestigious prize in the suite of honours handed out each year as part of the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers. Gilbert, 28, currently working on a doctorate in composition at McGill University, captured the grand prize in the competition for his work

L’instant d’avant, scored for violin, cello and piano. The same work earned him a first prize in the Serge Garant Awards category, while he won yet another first prize in the Godfrey Ridout Awards category for his work Ladomir, bringing him a total of $9,000 for the three prizes.

Winners in the remaining three categories once again included many young composers from Quebec, including Gabriel Dufour Laperrière, from Chicoutimi, who took the first prize in the Sir Ernest MacMillan Awards category for Les temps phénix; Montrealer Olivier Girouard, winner of the first prize in the Hugh Le Caine Awards category for Fabbrica-01; and second and third prize winners Pierre-Marc Beaudoin, Gabriel Dharmoo (two awards), Benoît Côté, Marielle Groven and Charles-Antoine Fréchette. Heymin Suk, originally from South Korea and currently a B.C. resident, won first prize in the Pierre Mercure Awards category for Abba Father, My Lord.

A total of 183 works were submitted to this year’s competition, from various regions throughout Canada, judged anonymously over three days last July in Toronto by jury members (and SOCAN composers) Christopher Butterfield, Louis Dufort and Linda Caitlin Smith. In all, 12 composers are featured among the 16 individual awards, which paid a total of $29,250. Eight of those composers are currently based in or studying in Quebec, where there seems to be, in the words of Butterfield, “a kind of critical mass of students who are very serious about composition.” Please click here for a complete list of winners.

The 2009 deadline for applications to the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers is April 15, 2009. The competition is open to composers under the age of 30 by the application deadline. Visit the SOCAN Foundation website for details.