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DANVILLE, KY- Laurence Bitensky, assistant professor of music at Centre College, has been honored as Distinguished Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association. He was honored for his composition entitled Mishb'rey yam ("Breakers of the Sea"), a song cycle for high voice and piano based on the Hebrew texts of Yehudah Halevi. The piece was commissioned by the Kentucky Music Teachers Association. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he completed a bachelor's degree in piano performance, Bitensky completed a master's degree in composition at Ithaca College. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Cornell University. Bitensky will perform his award-winning composition this month at the MTNA national convention, where he will receive a $3,000 cash prize. An accomplished composer, Bitensky has received several other prestigious awards including a grant from the ASCAP Foundation in 1996 and the John James Blackmore Prize in 1993 and 1994. He won the Smadbeck Composition Competition in 1989. His piano work, "Shouts and Murmurs," was the winning entry in the 1997 Friends and Enemies of New Music Composition Competition. -- end
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