A young Polish-American composer is the inaugural winner of the $50,000 Azrieli Prize in Jewish music, it was announced May 30.

Wlad Marhulets, 30, now based in Los Angeles, was selected for his composition Klezmer Clarinet Concerto.

“The Klezmer Clarinet Concerto is a dynamic work that is entirely modern, yet harkens back to traditional Jewish music,” said Sharon Azrieli Perez, founder of the Azrieli Music Project, launched by the Azrieli Foundation last year to encourage the creation and performance of orchestral music on a Jewish theme or subject.

“In Wlad Marhulets, we have a young composer who is poised for a major career.”

Azrieli Perez is an operatic soprano and scholar of Jewish and cantorial music.

Marhulets’ composition was selected by a jury from applications from composers from around world of all ages, faiths and histories.

Klezmer Clarinet Concerto will be performed by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and chorus, under the baton of music director Kent Nagano, on Oct. 19 at the Maison symphonique de Montréal.

Also on the program will be the winning composition of the inaugural Azrieli Commissioning Composition for a brand-new work: The Seven Heavenly Halls by the Canadian Brian Current, a Juno Award winner, which was announced in September and also carries a $50,000 prize.

Current, who is not Jewish, was inspired by the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar, which is central to Kabbalah.

Born in Minsk in 1986, Marhulets moved with his family to Gdansk, Poland as a child. It was there, at age 16, that he first heard a recording by the acclaimed American klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, who was a leader of the klezmer revival movement with the band The Klezmatics.

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Although Jewish, the Marhulets family was not practising.

“Listening to this modern reinvention of klezmer music changed my life,” said Marhulets, who immediately picked up the clarinet, formed his own klezmer band and started writing music.

Before travelling to New York City, with the goal of meeting Krakauer, the 20-year-old, who barely spoke a word of English, also sent his compositions to John Corigliano. He was so impressed, the Oscar- and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer took Marhulets under his wing at the Juilliard School.

Klezmer Clarinet Concerto was premiered by Krakauer and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2009. The piece has since been performed by the Orchestre national de Lyon and the Bialystok Symphony in Poland.

“The discovery of Jewish music as a teenager… inspired me to become a musician and to explore my own roots and culture through music,” said the young composer.

“Since then, I’ve been trying to give back by writing music that is primarily inspired by Jewish culture. I’m thrilled and honoured to be the winner of the Azrieli Prize and I could not be more grateful to the Azrieli Foundation. I can’t wait to hear the concerto performed by the OSM and Maestro Nagano.”

Since moving to Los Angeles, Marhulets has been composing for both concert and film, including The Orchestra of Exiles, a documentary about the creation of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

Among his concert pieces are The Property, a “klezmer opera” commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the oratorio Return, written for the beginning of the Polish presidency in the European Union.

The Leonard Bernstein Award-winner is currently working on a symphonic piece commissioned by the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, to be performed this month.

The Canadian and American jury members for the Azrieli prizes were conductor Boris Brott, composer Aaron Jay Kernis, musicologist Neil Levin, conductor and composer Steven Mercurio and composer Ana Sokolovic.