Danial Sheibani has won a SOCAN Foundation Young Composer Award, which afforded him the opportunity to compose a new work, Out of Thin Air, for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada (NYOC) in July of 2024.
This annual Young Composer Awards competition is designed to recognize Canadian composers who are 30 years of age and under, for original concert music works in the following five categories: large ensemble, chamber ensemble, solo or duet, vocal, and electroacoustics. A Grand Prize of $5,000 is awarded for the best overall work.
Within the works submitted in the large ensemble category, up to three orchestral compositions are selected to participate in the SOCAN Foundation/National Youth Orchestra of Canada Emerging Composers’ Mentorship Program. The composers of the selected works are invited to attend a NYOC rehearsal reading of their orchestral composition. One composer – in the 2024 edition, it was Sheibani – is also commissioned to write a new work to be premiered by the orchestra.
In Sheibani’s words, Out of Thin Air helps the listener experience a world centred around emotional instability, and longing for one’s childhood. “The structure is designed to have them question what they’re feeling, and getting pulled into,” he says. “It’s filled with moments of vulnerability that encapsulate the coming-of-age maturity required when met with a life-threatening complication. [There are] sudden interruptions in emotional states, accelerated breathing due to heightened trepidation, and desperate cries for help that remain unanswered.”
Sheibani’s work resonates across film, TV, theater, dance, and visual art. An Iranian-Canadian composer, conductor, vocalist, and teacher, he delves into the depths of the human psyche, inviting listeners on a voyage of introspection and revelation. With a passion for collaboration, he’s worked with the Norfolk New Music Ensemble, the University of Toronto Opera and Symphony Orchestra, the Verona Quartet, the Standing Wave Ensemble, and many more. Sheibani’s compositions work to induce memories from the lives of his listeners, and introduce them to new worlds of sensation and thought.
In the Summer of 2024, his music has been, and will be, performed at Koerner Hall, TCU Place, the Winspear Centre, and the Yale School of Music, by NYO Canada and the Norfolk New Music Ensemble. Past performance venues include Harbourfront Centre, the Arts & Letters Club of Toronto, The Annex (Vancouver), the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Pacific Lutheran University, and many more.