The Canadian University Music Society is pleased to announce that Nolan Sprangers is the recipient of the 2026 George Proctor Prize for his presentation entitled “Stravinsky’s Media Ecology.”
The George Proctor Prize is awarded to the best paper presented at the annual conference of the Canadian University Music Society by a graduate student noted for the originality of their research.
Nolan Sprangers is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Toronto, where he is also a student in the School of the Environment’s collaborative specialization in Environmental Studies. His research interests include twentieth-century Western art music, music incorporating sounds of nature and / or electronics, and the environmental impacts of industries required to produce live and recorded music. Nolan’s dissertation, currently titled “Stravinsky’s Media Ecologies,” explores an ecological view of Igor Stravinsky’s music by examining the composer’s poetics as they relate to nature, and by critiquing his reliance on natural resources to produce recordings on pianola rolls, shellac records, and vinyl records as well as to tour internationally via ocean liners, cars, and airplanes.
