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Anthony Tan (MMus’09, PhD’15) is the winner of the 2021 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for his composition Ways of Returning (2020). An 18-minute-long piece for amplified string quartet and electronics, Ways of Returning was commissioned by Quatuor Bozzini and E27 musique nouvelles. 

The Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music encourages Canadian professional composers to create avant-garde chamber music and to foster its performance by Canadian ensembles. The $7,500 cash prize was established in 1978 by the Right Honourable Jules Léger, then Governor General of Canada, who encouraged innovation and excellence. 

Anthony is a graduate of the Master’s and Doctoral Composition programs at the Schulich School of Music, having studied under John Rea, Sean Ferguson and Chris Paul Harman. 

About Anthony Tan 

Composer, pianist, and electronic musician Anthony Tan draws influence from conceptual metaphors, an attention to the psychophysical experiences of sound, and a reflection on music’s cultural context. His research interests include instrumental concert music with or without electronics, timbre theory, live and interactive electronics, music perception, composer-performer paradigms, free improvisation, and genre fluidity.  

Awards include the audience and jury prize from the ECM+ Generation 2014 tour, the 2011 Giga-Hertz Förder Prize, and the International Competition for live-electronics of the Hamburg Klangwerktage. Residencies include Expermentalstudio des SWR (Freiburg, Germany), and the Leighton Artist Studios at the Banff Centre.  

Tan holds a Ph.D. from Â鶹AV, Montréal, Canada, the Meisterklasse from the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden, Germany, and was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (RI’17). He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Victoria.