SOCAN member composer Paul Steenhuisen wins $15,000 award

Vancouver composer and SOCAN member Paul Steenhuisen is one of seven winners of the 2011 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.

The annual awards, worth $15,000 each, recognize outstanding mid-career artists in the seven disciplines funded by the Canada Council: theatre, visual arts, dance, media arts, integrated arts, music, and writing and publishing. The winners are chosen from the pool of applicants from the Grants to Professional Artists programs during the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Steenhuisen writes music for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, voice and orchestra, including pieces with live/fixed electronics. His work has earned numerous national and international awards, including seven SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers, four in the CBC Young Composers Competition, first prize in the Vancouver New Music Competition, and the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal as the outstanding student in all faculties (University of British Columbia, 1990).

Steenhuisen has been a Composer in Residence with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Alberta until 2007. In early 2009, Mr. Steenhuisen’s book Sonic Mosaics:  Conversations with Composers was published by the University of Alberta Press. He also contributes all audio content and programming to the Hyposurface interactive installation project based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.