She has since captured First Prize in the Delius Composition Contest, and received awards, grants and fellowships from ASCAP, the Susan Rose Recording Fund, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and Yaddo. Ms. Borzova’s music has been presented by the Aspen (Colorado), Delius (Florida), and Sonic Boom (New York City) music festivals in the U.S. and several major music festivals in Russia and Belarus, such as Moscow Musical Autumn (Moscow), Sound Ways (St. Pertersburg) and Belarussian Musical Autumn (Minsk). Her music has also been commissioned and presented by the Guggenheim Museum, Cutting Edge concert series, Da Capo Chamber Players, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Cassatt String Quartet, Dale Warland Singers, New Amsterdam Singers, The New York Concert Singers, Gregg Smith Singers, as well as individual performers, such as tenors Paul Sperry and James Rio, accordionist William Schimmel, violinist Yevgenia Strenger, and pianist Vassily Primakov. Among the Belarussian organizations that performed Ms. Borzova’s music are State Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of Belarus and Symphony Orchestra, Mixed, and Children Choruses of Belarussian Radio and Television. Ms. Borzova’s award-winning composition Mother Said has appeared on compact disk “Laugh Regardless of Creed”, released by Albany Records in March of 2005, and a CD of her chamber music will be released by this company in 2006. Ms. Borzova holds a Doctorate degree in Composition from the Moscow Conservatory where she studied composition with Alexander Pirumov. She has pursued additional doctoral studies at CUNY Graduate School with David Del Tredici. Formerly Professor of Composition at the Music College at the Belarussian Academy of Music, she was on the faculties of Hunter and Lehman Colleges of the City University of New York.
Brief info
Composer, pianist, conductor, and organist Alla Borzova rapidly gained prominence in the West after arriving in the U. S. in 1993 from Minsk, Belarus. When honoring her with its Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters hailed her as a "force on the American musical scene" with the observation: "Every note she writes has an intensity and immediacy that is as startling as it is affecting." Before her arrival to the U.S., Ms. Borzova twice won the All-Union Composition Contest.