Congratulations to our 2025/26 GCC Composition Competition winners!
After some difficult deliberations, we are thrilled to announce that this year’s First Prize winner is Minjoo Kim, for her composition “Before the Battle,” an a cappella setting of Siegfried Loraine Sassoon’s poem of the same name.
We are also delighted to share that this year’s Honourable Mention has been awarded to Janet Correia for her composition “The Bells”, based on the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.
We are extremely grateful to the many composers who participated in this year’s competition. We were very impressed by the calibre of submissions and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of interacting with these pieces.
About Minjoo Kim
Minjoo is a composer currently based in Toronto, whose works explore the interplay between traditional Korean music and contemporary Western idioms. Her music has been featured by the MacMillan Singers, Mannes Orchestra, and York Chamber Ensemble, among others.
Most recently, her choral piece “Swing Hosanna” commissioned by the MacMillan Singers, was performed in 2025 at the CoCA Popups Concert, hosted by CoSA Canada. In 2024, her piano trio piece “Starburst Capriccio” was premiered at the Asian Classical Music Initiative Conference in Los Angeles. She was awarded The Martinu Composition Prize at Mannes School of Music in 2022, and her orchestral piece “A Brutal Music Box” was premiered in New York City by the Mannes Orchestra in 2023.
She holds degrees from Mannes School of Music and is currently a doctoral candidate and Music Skills III TA at the University of Toronto, where she serves as Composer in Residence for the MacMillan Singers.
On why she selected “Before the Battle” for this new work for double choir, Minjoo said that it “was chosen for its profound reflection on the horrors of war and individual fear, conveying a sense of emptiness, dread, hopelessness, resignation and a faint glimmer of hope.”
We look forward to the premiere of “Before the Battle” at our upcoming concert, Sound | Space, on May 3.
About Janet Correia
Janet is an active musician and educator with 25+ years of experience in music education, collaborative accompanying, choral singing and conducting. Janet serves as Music Director at St. Luke’s Anglican Church Palermo and maintains a full private classical piano studio in Oakville.
She is the Collaborative Pianist with Myriad Ensemble, an upper voice choir in Burlington, and previously held the role of Collaborative Pianist and Associate Conductor with the Oakville Choir for Children & Youth for two decades.
An alumna of the University of Toronto, Janet holds a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Education. Other credentials include a Licentiate Diploma in Piano Performance (Trinity College, England) and an Artist-Teacher Diploma from the Glenn Gould Professional School (RCM) specializing in Piano Performance and Piano Pedagogy.