2020-2021 Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize Winners
The Schulich School of Music congratulates Justin Almazan (GrDipPerf'18, GrArtDip'20, MMus’21) and Samuel Hanna (MMus’21), winners of the 2020-2021 Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize for their project “Love Notes”!
Established in 2016 by the late Professor Eleanor Stubley to facilitate excellence and innovation in music performance and creation, the prize is awarded by a committee established by the Dean to an outstanding graduate student in a performance, composition or conducting program at the Schulich School of Music for a transformative recording project.
Project Abstract
Part filmed séance, part musical exposé, the “Love Notes” video album will explore the relationship between musical notes and written language. This project centers around selected primary source texts, such as letters written by composers, which link and inform three distinct musical compositions: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet No. 22 in B-flat Major K. 589, Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2,"Intimate Letters”, and Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation. “Love Notes” simultaneously alludes to the musical notation as well as the personal letters that comprise and inspired these musical compositions.
The reconciliation of a composer’s musical score with relevant primary source texts is one invaluable way of initiating a deeper, collective discussion between musicians and the composers who frequently cannot be personally consulted with about the nuances of their musical intentions. In effect, music that has become artifactual over time can regain life and adopt greater meaning, which minimizes the emotional distance between composers, musical artists, and audiences.
Further to these themes of time and distance, this project will seek to contribute to human interconnectedness during the ongoing live performance shortage by sharing music through high quality sound and video captures, which are then supplemented with probing intellectual commentaries and engaging historical contexts. The juxtaposition of these scores and texts will initiate a time-traveling, multilateral discourse regarding the ability for the love and consciousness imbued within music or written text to travel and communicate far beyond the existence of their creators. The connections are endless.
We caught up over email with Justin and Samuel to learn more about them, their time at Schulich and what led them to their prize-winning project.
What made you choose Schulich for your studies?
Justin Almazan: I applied to Schulich to work with my current professor, André Roy. During my undergraduate studies at Colburn in Los Angeles, he visited to give string and chamber music coaching one week. I was struck by the clarity of his insights and how immediately they affected my playing.
Samuel Hanna: I chose Schulich because I wanted to learn recording from the best possible sources — and the best professors that I wanted to study with all taught here.
How has being a Schulich student influenced you and your research?
SH: My time at Schulich has taught me a lot about communication with musicians and other engineers, and how you really have to put your ego aside when you're helping realize an artist’s vision.
JA: I would say I've come to realize how drastically research and information can interact and enhance performance. After attending two small conservatories, I came to McGill with what I see now as a narrow approach to learning. I would say the strong balance of research to performance at Schulich has really opened my mind, and allowed me to access certain aspects of my creativity that may have been undernourished by conservatory life.
What led you to this particular topic?
JA: I had this idea of pairing music with language, with the initial goal of just examining how the two interact and enlighten one other. This idea then got mixed in with chamber works that I was learning with my quartet, and I wanted to challenge myself to find connections between 3 very different works by Mozart, Janacek, and Caroline Shaw. I did some research on the lives of these composers, and (guided by the Janacek's title "Intimate Letters") I found that there were interesting, personal letters related to each work that could affect and inform the listeners.
What are your next steps?
SH: I'm moving back to my home city of Toronto to try and make it as a recording engineer!
JA: The project audio is all recorded! But as for my own personal plans, I am starting a doctorate in the fall. One of my research topics is an extension of this project, and will investigate beneficial points of overlap between language and musical learning. I really think that the research in creating and designing this project helped guide me towards pursuing my doctoral program.
What advice would you give to new students in your program?
JA: I think the desire to do well and be a good student musically and academically is good, but focusing too exclusively on these as goals can really limit your imagination, creativity, and enjoyment during your years studying (even after you finish a degree). If you only think about performance and course evaluations scores, you might end up having a really limited idea of what you can offer and achieve.
SH: I think the best advice that I could give would be to try to meet as many musicians who play as many different styles of music as possible. This is most likely the only time in anyone's career where we can record anything that we want, so take advantage of the opportunity!
Why the desire for a video album as opposed to just an audio experience?
SH: I think that it's a different way of telling the story of the music, that we both wanted to explore a little bit. My experience lies mostly in audio, so I was really interested to see and experiment with how adding video would change the context of the music.
What is your earliest musical memory?
SH: My earliest musical memory is wanting a violin for Christmas when I was 4 because I saw an orchestra on the Teletubbies TV show.
JA: Classical music was not present in my household growing up, so the first exposure I had to it was in a car commercial that featured newlyweds driving away, with "Just Married" painted on the back window. But it was the background music that really had me mesmerized. I had never been so stimulated and engrossed by sound before then. It was not until many years later in my middle school orchestra class that I finally heard the piece again — it was Pachelbel's Canon in D.
If you hadn’t ended up in music, what would your alternate career path have been?
JA: I think I would still pursue creative work, probably something with a camera. I really admire photographers and cinematographers who get to capture beauty and moments for a living.
SH: I think my alternate career path would be as a teacher. I honestly never thought about alternatives, I've known that I was going to go into music since I was very little.
What was the album you listened to?
SH: The last album I listened to was You Forgot it in People by Broken Social Scene. I highly recommend it!
Samuel Hanna is a recent Master's graduate of the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, specializing in Sound Recording. Their musical upbringing began when they were 4 years old, asking for a violin for Christmas. During high school, they discovered the engineering side of music through a friend and fell in love. Samuel received their Bachelor's in Jazz Performance at Humber College and worked in their in-house studio, assisting the lead engineers in recording short EPs for graduating students and learning professional techniques. Samuel then decided to attend McGill to further that learning.
During his studies at McGill, Samuel has received both a gold and silver standing in the McGill Audio Engineering Society's student recording competitions for both jazz and classical recordings. They have had the opportunity to learn from legendary recording engineers and are eagerly looking forward to the future of his sound recording career.
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Educated at the Colburn School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, Justin Almazan was a finalist for the Golden Violin Award 2018, and was one of 8 candidates chosen to compete for the Prix Orford Special Edition 2020.
As an orchestral musician, Justin has performed with the Vancouver Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and Montreal Symphony Orchestras. Previously, Justin has served as principal violist of the Sarasota Music Festival orchestra and the Bach Weimar Academy in Germany.
As a chamber musician, Justin has performed with Kim Kashkashian, Joseph Silverstein, Raphael Rosenfeld, James Buswell, Philip Setzer of the Emerson Quartet, as well as with principal wind players of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Violist of the Persée String Quartet, Justin was accepted to the McGill International String Quartet Academy as a senior quartet. The Persée quartet was also selected to compete in the International String Quartet Competition "Premio Paolo Borciani" in Italy. In 2017, Justin toured Italy as a member of the Milton String Quartet's Fischoff Competition Grand Prize Tour.
