Myra Melford - Awards As a composer, Melford has received numerous commissions, including a Hellman Family Fund award for Portable World—music for a large ensemble of improvisers, and a University of California at Berkeley Junior Faculty Research Grant for Life Carries Me This Way, music for solo piano inspired by the drawings of Don Reich (2008-9). In recent years she received a Chamber Music America New Works Presentation Grant for new music for quintet (2003-4), and a British Arts Council commission (1999) for a nonet comprised of Equal Interest and 6 British musicians. She received a commission from Steirische Kulturinitiative (2000) for the multimedia project, My Face of Us All a work for three musicians, butoh dancerss, architect and videographer. She received a Harvestworks Project Residency in 2003–4 and a University of California at Berkeley Junior Faculty Research Grant in 2004–5 to develop an interactive computer system using MAX/MSP for the multi-media project Knock on the Sky, as well an NPN touring/residency grant to present the work in 2005. Other commissions include the dance-theater score “My House Was Collapsing to One Side,” premiered at Dance Theater Workshop New York City in 1996; and “D Train,” an evening-length score for the Fay Simpson Dance Theater. Melford is also the recipient of three Arts International Grants to perform at foreign festivals, three Composition Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as commissioning grants from the Mary Flager Cary Charitable Trust and Meet the Composer. Melford’s piano playing and composing have earned her wide critical recognition. Melford was nominated for the Jazz Journalists Association Awards as “pianist of the year” in 2008 and 2009, and as “composer of the year” in 2004. Down Beat Critics' polls have honored Melford as a pianist, composer and bandleader numerous times between 1991 and 2008.