Corey Rubin has been named the winner of this year’s NOTUS Choral Composition Contest. Rubin’s prize-winning work is After-Glow for mixed chorus a cappella.
A second-year graduate student, he is pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at the Jacobs School, and his teachers have included Claude Baker, Don Freund, and Sven-David Sandström. He is a member of NOTUS: IU Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and will sing in the premiere of his work during the ensemble’s April 24 concert at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall.
Rubin says of the work: “After-Glow contains a setting of a poem by the English poet Ivor Gurney, who wrote ‘After-Glow’ during his time as a soldier in World War I. … In the poem, Gurney wanders out into the night and, admiring the moon, is overcome by nostalgia as he imagines an eventual reunion with his absent friend, complete with vivid sunset and the music of Bach.”
The April concert, titled Refracted Requiem, will also feature world-premiere works of two Jacobs School faculty members, P. Q. Phan’s A Vietnamese Requiem and Dominick DiOrio’s Stravinsky Refracted, both for ensembles of instruments and voices.
Two honorable mentions were given: Paul Mortilla’s O Magnum Mysterium and Maxwell Ramage’s We’ll to the woods no more.
The contest is an initiative of DiOrio, choral conducting faculty member and conductor of NOTUS. The annual competition is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students at the Jacobs School of Music.
Judges for the competition included Executive Associate Dean and Professor of Composition Eugene O’Brien; Director of Opera Choruses Walter Huff, and Associate Professor of Organ Bruce Neswick. DiOrio did not take part in the judging panel. The submission of scores was anonymous and the judges did not see names or identifying information until after final decisions were made.
Rubin (b. 1983) previously earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition degree from Cleveland State University in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where he studied with Andrew Rindfleisch and Greg D’Alessio. His music has been presented across the United States and Europe, most recently at the 2014 highSCORE Festival in Pavia, Italy, and the 2014 Zodiac Festival in Valdeblore, France. In February 2014, his work After the Dazzle of Day, for chorus, wind ensemble, and string, was premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York City by high school musicians from Duxbury, Mass.
Rubin’s works have been recorded professionally by such artists as violinist Rolf Schulte, pianist Geoffrey Burleson, clarinetist Pat O’Keefe, and cellist David Russell. In 2012, his Broken Pearls, for string orchestra, won him the Young and Emerging Composers Competition of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and in 2010, he won the Commission Competition of the NO EXIT New Music Ensemble, for which he composed the string trio Skin and Bones. Rubin’s music has also been performed by the Ensemble Dal Niente, Slee Sinfonietta, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Janus Trio, and Genkin Philharmonic. He was a longtime member of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and an occasional contributor of crossword puzzles to The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.