In 1995, the CBC commissioned Murphy’s first orchestra piece for the
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO).
From the Drum Comes a Thundering Beat was premiered by the WSO under
Bramwell Tovey at a concert in March 1996, and went on to place fifth at the 1996
International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. her
Utterances was premiered by the
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (ESO) at the 1999 Edmonton rESOund Festival of Contemporary Music, and subsequently placed third at the 1999 Alexander Zemlinsky Competition; She also continued to write pieces for chamber orchestra and small ensembles, including
Circadian Rhythms for
string orchestra (1997), premiered by the
Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in 1998);
Another Little Piece of My Heart for string quartet (1999), premiered by the
Alcan String Quartet (later the
Saguenay String Quartet); her
Departures and Derivations (2001) for French horn, violin, and piano premiered at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, and won the 2002
International Horn Society Composer’s Prize. From 2006 to 2008, Murphy was
composer-in-residence with the
National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Roughly a decade later, Murphy won a commission through
Symphony Nova Scotia’s 2017 Maria Anna Mozart Award for Canadian female composers, launched in 2016. The resulting piece,
Dragon, Unfolding, premiered with Symphony Nova Scotia the following March. That same year, the
Azrieli Foundation gave Murphy its 2018 Commission for Jewish Music. She wrote a concerto for harp, cello, and chamber orchestra titled
En el escuro es todo uno (en:
In the Darkness All Is One), inspired by a
Sephardic proverb and written in the tradition of Sephardic music. It was premiered by the
McGill University Chamber Orchestra under
Yoav Talmi, and subsequently recorded and released on the album
New Jewish Music, Vol. 2 produced by the Azrieli Foundation, which also featured pieces from
Srul Irving Glick and
Avner Dorman, the winner of the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. Also in 2018,
The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto commissioned Murphy’s cello octet
Coffee Will Be Served in the Living Room. The piece subsequently won the
Canada Council’s 2020 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. In January 2026, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra announced Murphy as their new composer-in-residence, to begin in the 2026-27 season, succeeding
Haralabos Stafylakis after a decade in that role. ==External links==