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Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize 2017-18

Published: 18 April 2018

Through a unanimous agreement, the winner of this year’s Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize is Sarah Rossy (BMus ’17, MMus ’19) who will work together with Jennifer Nulsen (MMus ’18) on the project “Jazz in the Balance: Exploring Music Making and Creation in Gender and Genre-Balanced Teams and Environments.”

This project consists of a suite of original contemporary jazz to be recorded by and produced in collaboration with Jennifer Nulsen. The recording will feature a gender-balanced team of past and current McGill students from both the classical and jazz performance departments. Through careful selection of ensemble members, this sound recording will address the problematic gender imbalance in the jazz setting and will create an opportunity for collaboration between musicians in the classical and jazz areas.

The Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize was established by the late Professor Eleanor Stubley in 2016 to facilitate excellence and innovation in musical performance and creation. It is awarded by a committee established by the Dean of the Schulich School of Music to an outstanding graduate student in a performance, composition or conducting program at the Schulich School of Music for a transformative recording project. 

Sarah Rossy (BMus ’17, MMus ’19)

Supervisor: John Hollenbeck

Evoking powerful imagery and a wide pallette of colour, Sarah Rossy’s vocal artistry is characterized by its light yet present agility and experimental performance techniques. She has studied with avant-garde performance pioneer Meredith Monk, and recently returned from a 3- week experimental vocal residency in Berlin.

Sarah is well-versed in performance, with sold-out headlining performances at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in both 2016 and 2017. She has shared the stage with internationally-acclaimed ensembles and artists such as l’Orchestre National de Jazz, Aaron Parks, John Hollenbeck, Theo Bleckmann, Christine Jensen, and Patrick Watson, among others. The Montreal-native is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Jazz Performance at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University under the supervision of John Hollenbeck. She is working toward the production of her first full-length album, set for release in 2019. 

Jennifer Nulsen (MMus ’18)

Supervisors: Richard King, Martha deFrancisco, George Massenburg, and Wieslaw Woszcyzk

Jennifer Nulsen is best known for her work at well-known arts centers such as the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, MA, the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Hartt School at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, CT. She has produced concert recordings for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the McGill Symphony Orchestra (which have been broadcast regionally on Boston's WCRB and nationally with the Canadian Broadcasting Company), and studio recordings for chamber orchestras at the Hartt School. An active freelance engineer, Jennifer has worked as a recording and editing engineer on several CD releases, and regularly records and mixes classical, rock, jazz, and pop artists for single and EP releases. She has also regularly worked as an assistant engineer for labels in the Montreal scene, including ATMA Classique and Analekta. 

Jennifer is a three-time finalist in the international Audio Engineering Society Student Recording Competition, having received the Traditional Acoustic Bronze Award in Los Angeles in 2014, a Traditional Acoustic Honorable Mention in New York in 2015, and most recently, the Traditional Acoustic Gold Award in Los Angeles in 2016. She was also one of the recipients of the 2016-2017 John R.E. Bradley Award for Excellence in Sound Recording and has most recently won the 2018 Eleanor Stubley Sound Recording competition with Sarah Rossy. She received two Bachelor of Music degrees in music production and technology and piano performance from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford in 2016, where she was employed as a senior recording engineer and teaching assistant. She has completed three seasons at the Tanglewood Music Center as an assistant audio engineer (and one as studio manager) and is currently finishing a master's degree in sound recording at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, for which she has received several fellowships, including the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation grant, the Bruce Swedien AES honorarium, the Edith Jacobson Low-Beer Fellowship in Music, and a Student Excellence Award. She is currently working as a webcasting technician under George Massenburg.

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