That Eric Alper

Today, the Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre (AMACC) named four outstanding composers as the 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) Laureates. Created in 2014 by Dr. Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes celebrate excellence in music composition.

Congratulations to Hana Ajiashvili, who won the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music; Dalit Hadass Warshaw, who received the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music; Nicholas Denton Protsack, who was awarded the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music; and Adrian Mocanu, who won the Azrieli Commission for International Music.

“We are proud to announce the 2026 AMP Laureates. It is a privilege to celebrate their remarkable creativity and a joy to share their impressive ideas for what can be expressed through classical music today,” says Dr. Sharon Azrieli CQ. “The Azrieli Music Prizes were designed to identify exceptional composers and to support them in creating future masterworks. We give them every resource to create great music, then bring it to global audiences, both on stage and in recordings. Beyond the premiere, we champion their compositions for continued success. We look forward to presenting these works at next year’s Gala concert with our wonderful partner, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and in many subsequent performances for years to come.”

Offering the most substantial awards of its kind in Canada, AMP has become one of the most significant composition competitions in the world. Each laureate receives a prize package valued at over CAD 250,000, including a cash award of CAD 50,000; a performance of their work by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and OSM Chorus, conducted by Asher Fisch, at the AMP Gala Concert on October 15, 2026; two subsequent international performances; and a commercial recording of their prize-winning work, also featuring the OSM.

“An orchestra must be as alive as the world it reflects. Playing the music of today is both a responsibility and a privilege — it is how we stay connected to the pulse of our time and ensure that our art form continues to evolve, inspire, and resonate with future generations,” says Mélanie La Couture, President and CEO of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

“Each new score expands our horizon, allowing audiences to experience the thrill of creation in the present moment. By performing the works of living composers, we invest in the future of our art and reaffirm the Orchestra’s role as a vital force in contemporary culture. The most sincere thanks to the Azrieli Foundation, a cherished partner of the OSM. It is a pleasure to be part of the Azrieli Music Prizes once again.”

Each AMP competition cycle focuses on a specific instrumentation category. The four 2026 works will be for choir with orchestra and optional soloists.

This year, three distinguished jury panels — consisting of composers, musicologists, conductors and producers — selected the winning submissions. The juries included Barbara Assiginaak C.M. O.Ont., Ofer Ben-Amots, Gisèle Ben-Dor, Chaya Czernowin, Margareta Ferek-Petrić, Jonathan Goldman, Daniel Kidane, Neil W. Levin, Samy Moussa, Steven Mercurio, David Pay, Colleen Renihan, Ana Sokolović, Na’ama Zisser and past AMP Laureates Avner Dorman and Kelly-Marie Murphy.

ABOUT THE LAUREATES 

Hana Ajiashvili — Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music

The Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is awarded to a composer who has written the best undiscovered work of Jewish music. Hana Ajiashvili received the 2026 Prize for her 2022 work Riddle, which transforms poet Yehuda Halevi’s haunting medieval verse into a powerful meditation on persecution and resilience.

Hana Ajiashvili is a Georgian-Israeli composer whose music is performed internationally by leading ensembles, including the Meitar Ensemble (Tel Aviv), Musica Nova (Tel Aviv), Ensemble XXI Century (Vienna), The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Momenta Quartet (NYC), Mivos Quartet (NYC), Continuum (NYC), Reconsil (Vienna), defunensemble (Finland), Riot Ensemble (London) and Trio Catch (Hamburg). Her works appear at festivals worldwide, including Heroines of Sound (Berlin), CEME (Tel Aviv), Arco (Salzburg), ISCM World New Music Days, the Asian Composers League Festival, Sound Roads (St. Petersburg), Dresden Nights, Ha-Teiva Marathon, Tzlil Meudcan Festival (Tel Aviv), SaxOpen (Strasbourg), Moscow Autumn and Alternativa (Moscow). 

Ajiashvili has received the Israel Contemporary Players’ Young Israeli Composers Prize (2004), the Prime Minister’s Award for Composers (2008, 2021), the Acum Award (2017) and first prizes at the Contempus – University of Macedonia (2022) and Luxembourg International Composition Competition “Artistes in Herbe” (2025). She studied in Tbilisi, Moscow and in Tel Aviv at the Bar-Ilan University, where she directs the Or Yehuda Conservatory. She has received multiple commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, including Zoominout (2011) and Impossible Sketches (2023). She collaborated with librettist Royce Vavrek on the opera Cut Glass (2020) and the oratorio Philosophies (2023).

Dalit Hadass Warshaw — Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music

The Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music is awarded to encourage composers to creatively and critically engage with the question, “What is Jewish music?” It is given to the composer who displays the utmost creativity, artistry, technical mastery and professional expertise in their response to this question. 

Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s proposed work Letter From Across the River tells the true story of her great-grandfather in war-torn Poland, who swam across the Bug River to send a farewell letter before returning to face his fate with his family. Known for her lush, expressive orchestral palette and deeply lyrical writing, Warshaw relays this final act of love through what will be a work of sweeping emotion and shimmering color.  

American composer, pianist and thereminist Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Albany Symphony and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Her works Conjuring Tristan and Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra have been praised for their lyricism and emotional depth. Her debut orchestral album, Dalit Hadass Warshaw: Sirens (BMOP/sound, 2025), featuring the Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose, was described by The Boston Globe as “sublimely expressive.” Warshaw’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Copland House Residency Award and multiple MacDowell Fellowships. A former composition faculty member at the Boston Conservatory and Juilliard, she currently teaches at the Mannes School of Music and Brooklyn College (CUNY). 

Nicholas Denton Protsack — Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music

The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music is offered to a Canadian composer to create a new musical work that engages with the complexities of composing concert music in Canada today. This year, the jury selected Nicholas Denton Protsack for his proposed work Height of Land, for orchestra, chorus and solo cello, in which he reimagines what it means to write Canadian music through the lens of environmental listening and renewal. The work will invite listeners into a sound world where land, water and voice converge in a living, breathing musical ecosystem.

New Zealand–based Canadian composer and cellist Nicholas Denton Protsack creates music that explores connections between sound, ecology and improvisation. Described by the Canadian Music Centre as a “composer to keep a close eye on,” his works have been performed across North America, Europe and New Zealand. Named the SOCAN Emerging Composer-in-Residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2025, Denton Protsack is also a recipient of the BMI Foundation Student Composer Award and several SOCAN Young Composer Awards.

His music has been commissioned by ensembles and organizations including Stroma (New Zealand), the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Toronto Summer Music Festival and Ensemble for These Times (E4TT). A dedicated cellist, Denton Protsack performs widely as a soloist and chamber musician and is founder of Whatnot Records, an independent label devoted to experimental and cross-genre projects. He holds a PhD in composition from Victoria University of Wellington.

Adrian Mocanu — Azrieli Commission for International Music

The Azrieli Commission for International Music is offered to a composer who engages deeply in an interplay of cultures meaningful to their lived experience. 2026 laureate Adrian Mocanu’s proposed work, de l’encra escafada (“from faded ink”), will resurrect the lost voices of the trobairitz—the female troubadours of medieval Provence—through complex choral textures and the haunting sonority of four violas da gamba. Inspired by the lone surviving song of Beatriz de Dia, the work will become an act of musical reclamation, where fragments of forgotten language and melody reassemble into living echoes of the past.

Romanian-Ukrainian composer Adrian Mocanu has received international recognition through awards such as the Frederic Mompou International Award (2017), the Borys Lyatoshynsky Composition Competition (2021) and the Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition (2022). His works have been performed across Europe and the Americas by leading ensembles including Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Recherche, Maulwerker, Ensemble Mosaik and the Barcelona Modern Ensemble.

Mocanu has held residencies and fellowships with Ensemble Recherche (Germany), Casa de Velázquez (Spain), the Odyssée program (France), the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome (2025) and the Weltoffenes Berlin Fellowship with Maulwerker (2024). He studied composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine and the Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska in Madrid. His recent commission from the DEBUT Classical Singing Competition (Germany, 2024) reflects his growing reputation as a distinctive voice among the new generation of European composers. 

About the Azrieli Music Prizes 

Created in 2014 by Dr. Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) offers opportunities for discovering, creating, performing and celebrating excellence in music composition. Open to the international music community, AMP accepts nominations for works from individuals and institutions of all ages, nationalities, faiths and genders, which are then submitted to its expert juries through an open call for scores and proposals. 

The four AMP prize packages — now valued at CAD 250,000 per laureate — make it the top music composition competition in Canada and one of the largest in the world. Past prize- winners include Georgian-Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili (2024), Israeli composer Yair Klartag (2024), Mexican composer Juan Trigos (2024), Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi (2022), Israeli-Canadian composer Aharon Harlap (2022), Canadian composers Jordan Nobles (2024), Rita Ueda (2022), Keiko Devaux (2020), Kelly-Marie Murphy (2018) and Brian Current (2016), Dutch-born American composer Yotam Haber (2020), Israeli-Australian composer Yitzhak Yedid (2020), Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman (2018) and US-based Polish composer Wlad Marhulets (2016).