Myra Melford - Awards

As a composer, Melford has received numerous commissions, including the Chamber Music America New Works Presentation Grant for new music for quintet (2003), and a British Arts Council commission (1999) for a nonet comprised of Equal Interest and 6 British musicians. 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 2006 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Flynn Center in Burlington. In 2000, she received a commission from Steirische Kulturinitiative (2000) for the multimedia project, "My Face of Us All" a work for three musicians, butoh dancer, architect and videographer, performed in Graz, Austria.

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 Journalist Association Awards as "composer of the year" in 2004. Down Beat Critics' polls honored Melford as "talent-deserving-wider-recognition" as a pianist in 1995, '94, '92, and '91, and as a composer as well as a pianist in 2001, 2000, '99, '98 and '97.

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