Violinist Arlan Vriens receives $10,000 emerging artist award

Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music Arlan Vriens has been named as a recipient of a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta 2022 Emerging Artist award. The violinist is one of eleven artists selected for a prize, whittled down from 140 applicants. He receives a cash prize of $10,000, a handcrafted medal and certificate.

’Our artists help tell and shape our stories – enriching how we see and appreciate one another, and these eleven have so many stories to share,’ said foundation board chair Arlene Strom.

Vriens enjoys a career exploring a range of musical styles. As a new music specialist, he has premiered numerous contemporary works across North America and Europe, including the Ruth Crawford Seeger String Quartet 1941 (Confluence Concerts, Toronto), Steve Reich’s Music for 18 (UToronto Percussion Ensemble), Schnittke’s Sonata for Violin and Orchestra (Newfound Music Festival).

Vriens is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and a doctor of musical arts candidate at the University of Toronto, where he studies with  violinist Mark Fewer. His ongoing dissertation research aims to rediscover the lost performance techniques of the late 18th-century violinist Friedrich Wilhelm Rust

Vriens has held tenures as concertmaster of Opera on the Avalon and associate concertmaster of the Newfoundland Symphony.

The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta 2022 Emerging Artist awards are given to promising Canadian artists who have mastered their art form through education or apprenticeship in the early stages of their careers. In an adjudication process overseen by the Banff Centre, the panel included Los Angeles composer Darren Fung; Sean Caulfield, artist and Centennial Professor in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Alberta; Patricia Darbasie, Alberta actor, director and educator; Jenna Butler, 2014 LG Emerging Artist, author and educator; and Derek Beaulieu, jury facilitator, director of literary arts at the Banff Centre.

Watch Vriens perform an excerpt from Salvatore Sciarrino’s Violin Caprice no.2