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Michael LaCroix
Michael LaCroix (b. Jan. 12th, 1973, Windsor, Canada) is a student of Marta Ptaszynska in the PhD program in music composition at the University of Chicago . He graduated Cum Laude from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, with a BMus in Jazz Piano, and continued at WSU with graduate work in composition under James Hartway. He has also studied with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Shulamit Ran, and other internationally recognized composers including Elzbieta Sikora, Jan Radzynski, Lukas Foss, Narcis Bonet, Philip Lasser, and James Lentini.
He won a SOCAN (Canada's equivalent of ASCAP) award for his solo piano work Potens Nuntius, which was premiered by Robert Conway, pianist for the Detroit Symphony, and has received performances of his music at various venues including: the ARCANA Composers' Meeting in Capriolo, Italy; the historic Schola Cantorum in Paris; the Detroit International Jazz Festival; the Windsor Canadian Music Festival; and by notable performers such as: the Third Angle New Music Ensemble in Portland, OR; by the Flux String Quartet at CAMI Hall in NYC; by eighth blackbird pianist Lisa Kaplan in Chicago; and across South America by Brazilian pianist Paulo Gazzañeo. Three Sketches for piano four-hands was commissioned by Robert Conway and Catherine Wilson and premiered in Abbotsford, B.C. and Toronto, Canada with subsequent performances in Detroit, and Columbus, OH, and later recorded for release on compact disc.
The Grammy Award-winning ensemble eighth blackbird and featured soloist Julia Bentley gave the premiere of his work, Twelve Faces of the Emerald, for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble (fl, cl, vlc, perc, pno). The piece is a setting of a poem of the same name by the late Israeli poet Dan Pagis. The performance took place in Fulton Recital Hall at the University of Chicago on May 11, 2007. Read flutist Tim Munro's reaction to the piece on 8bb's blog in the entry Prima Primas. In November 2007, Twelve Faces was awarded third prize in the Fourth International Prof. Ivan Spassov Composition Competition in Bulgaria.
Twelve Faces received its West-Coast premiere in a new version for tenor on January 26, 2008 featuring Marc Lowenstein with ensemble green in Pasadena, CA.
Also on January 26, A Million People on One String, his new work for The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and conductor Cliff Colnot was featured in a reading/recording session in Chicago. A new version of A Million People will be featured this July in Metz, France as part of the 2008 Centre Acanthes Composition Workshop with the Orchestre National de Lorraine and conductor Diego Masson at the historic Arsenal de Metz. Support for his trip to France comes from a grant from the Lowell C. Wadmond fund of the University of Chicago Music Department.
His most recent work, A Presence Close as Breath, written for members of eighth blackbird will be premiered May 23, 2008 at Ganz Hall in downtown Chicago.
He has been invited to compose a new work for cellist Rohan de Saram and violist Garth Knox (both are former members of the Arditti Quartet) as part of the 2008 Intrasonus Festival/Masterclass in early spring in Mestre-Venice, Italy. The festival will feature workshops with composer Adriano Guarnieri and the completed work will be premiered in Italy next season.
Also, he has just received a commission by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra with a Commissioning of Canadian Compositions grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for a new work that will be premiered during the Windsor Canadian Music Festival in February 2009.
When he is not at the piano, most often Mike can be found improvising recipes in his home kitchen. As serious about food as he is music, he recently took a year off of school to work full time in the kitchen of a popular classic French restaurant, la petite folie. In the warmer months, Mike turns his attention to his organic vegetable and herb garden.
Mike and his wife Elizabeth became parents to a beautiful baby girl, Nourit Hélène, on December 26, 2005, and were blessed with another beautiful girl, Avital Anaïs, on January 27, 2008!
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