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The 2010 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award

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The University of Illinois School of Music presents:

The 2010 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award

Eligibility: Any composer, regardless of age or nationality.

Awards: First Prize cash award of $1000 and second prize cash award of $500 plus performances by the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble in November of 2010 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Additional awards and performances may be given at the discretion of the judges.

Judges: A panel of judges consisting of University of Illinois music composition faculty members will select the winning compositions. The winning composers are expected to attend the award concert/reception and will be responsible for their transportation costs (the competition will provide a stipend for lodging). The winning composers will assume full responsibility for providing adequate performance materials upon request.

Guidelines:
1. Medium: Full scores of any style or aesthetic direction for one to fifteen performers (including vocalists) may be submitted. Works for tape, electronics and/or mixed media with or without instruments/voices are eligible.
2. Duration: 20 minutes maximum
3. Limit: One entry per composer
4. Entry fee: A non-refundable entry fee of fifteen U.S. dollars ($15.00) must be included with each submission. Payment must be in US Dollars in the form of a check, international money order or credit card (preferable). All checks and money orders must be payable to the University of Illinois, and must be drawn on a U.S. bank. Please make sure to print the credit card authorization form (clik here for form) and sign authorizing the use of the card for the amount specified, the type of card, card number, and expiration date (incomplete authorizations will be rejected).
5. Anonymous Submission: The composer’s name must not appear on the score itself or on any item (tape, CD, etc.) submitted in supplement to the application. A sealed envelope must accompany the score and contain the composer’s name, address, telephone number/e-mail (if applicable) and a brief biographical sketch. If a recording of the work is available, it should accompany the score and be identified only by the title of the composition.
6. Return of Materials: Scores will not be returned unless a self-addressed, stamped envelope of the proper size is enclosed.
7. Previous winners and faculty and currently-enrolled students at the University of Illinois are ineligible for the competition.

Send submissions to:
2010 Martirano Composition Award
Attn: Zack Browning, Director, Martirano Award
2136 Music Building
University of Illinois
1114 West Nevada
Urbana, IL 61801 USA
zbrownin@illinois.edu
http://camil.music.uiuc.edu/CompTheory/Awards/Martirano.html
All submissions must be postmarked by March 15, 2010
Zack Browning
www.zackbrowning.com

Sundance Institute Announces Six Fellows for the 2009 Sundance Institute Composers Lab

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Fellows Span the Musical Spectrum with Unique Backgrounds in Jazz, Funk, Big Band, and Classical

Creative Advisors Include Three-Time Academy Award Winner Walter Murch and Golden Globe Winner Harry Gregson-Williams

Los Angeles, CA — Today, Sundance Institute announced the six musicians selected for the 2009 Sundance Institute Composers Lab, which runs from July 15 – July 29 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. This year’s Composers Lab Fellows are Kim Carroll, Chanda Dancy, Magda Giannikou, Lili Haydn, Christopher Lord, and David Poe. The selected composers bring an eclectic range of talent to the two-week lab, which focuses on the process of writing music for film with the support and guidance of the industry’s leading film composers and film music professionals.

To give the composers first-hand experience, the Lab Fellows also collaborate with filmmakers from the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. The Composers Lab Fellows will explore the process of writing music for film by creating accompanying scores for scenes shot during the Feature Film Program’s Directors Lab, held earlier this summer.

The Composers Lab is a major component of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program, dedicated to supporting emerging film composers and to enhancing the role of music in independent film. First offered from 1986-1989, the Composers Lab was re-introduced in the summer of 1998 to provide a collaborative and supportive environment in which composers experiment and expand their musical language. The Lab Fellows have a wide variety of experiences — some have never scored a film while others have composed quite a few scores for independent film.

“During their time at the lab, we create a place where the composers can focus on stretching their unique musical voice,” said Peter Golub, Director, Sundance Institute Film Music Program. “By pairing composers with filmmakers, we initiate dialogue and explore the important role music plays in storytelling. We are thrilled that this year’s fellows bring a diversity of backgrounds and of genres, and their time at the Lab will certainly be a time of exploration and growth.”

The Fellows for the 2009 Sundance Institute Composers Lab are:

Kim Carroll

Irish-born, Carroll has distinguished himself by taking an organic approach to film composing, using live instruments and employing discrete textured guitar. His credits include the thriller The Colony (Gold Medal winner at the 2008 Park City Film Music Festival); the dark comedy webseries Hellholes; the 2009 Sundance Film Festival acclaimed film The Horse Boy (co-composed with Lili Haydn); and the documentary Survival of the Wildebeest. As a guitarist, he can be heard on the soundtracks of Gone Baby Gone, The Chronicles of Narnia, Veronica Guerin and others.

Chanda Dancy

Dancy, a composer of music for film and video games including Arabian Lords and Code Orange, is a graduate of the University of Southern California Advanced Studies in Scoring for Film and Television. She is the winner of 2002 BMI Fellowship in Film Scoring and the 2004 Associated Production Music/Young Musicians Foundation Music Business Fellowship. Dancy has had the opportunity to score several films including the critically acclaimed documentary What Are We Waiting For? and the award-winning feature Chandler Hall. Music by Chanda has been heard around the world at festivals such as Cannes Film Festival, L.A. Film Festival, Jackson Hole Film Festival, Sapporo Short Film Festival, and L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Magda Giannikou

Born in Athens, Greece, Giannikou studied piano and musical theory at the National Conservancy of Greece and Nakas Jazz School. After working as an in-house arranger/producer for Legend Recordings’ children’s division, Giannikou attended Berklee College of Music, where she received the Georges Delerue Award for Achievement in Film Scoring. In addition to film composing, Giannikou has explored big band music, and she has performed as an accordionist and vocalist, including for her own band, Mellow Bellow.

Lili Haydn

Before launching her solo career, singer-songwriter-violinist Lili Haydn established herself by playing with such diverse artists as Porno for Pyros, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Herbie Hancock, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page and the Los Angeles Philharmonic,. She has released four solo albums with major labels; her most recent album, Places Between Places, was featured on NPR. A sometime member of Parliament-Funkadelic, Haydn has been called by George Clinton “the Jimi Hendrix of the violin.” She also co-composed the score to the critically acclaimed 2009 Sundance Film Festival, The Horse Boy.

Christopher Lord

As a graduate of UCLA and Berklee College of Music, Lord is the top-10 winner of the 8th Annual Young Film Composers Competition (Turner Classic Movies) and was chosen to participate in the mentorship program at the Society of Composers and Lyricists. Recent credits include At the Movies (ABC), Million Dollar Listing (Bravo), and the feature Blind Ambition. As an orchestrator, he has worked on numerous studio films, including Transformers 2VG, The Dark Knight, Hairspray, Evan Almighty, and The Mummy 3.

David Poe

Originally from the Midwest, Poe was transplanted to Manhattan where he ran the soundboard for the legendary CBGB’s gallery before he signed onto Sony/Epic. A songwriter, producer and composer for film, theater, and dance, Poe has scored the films Chapter, Dare, Harvest and Little Spirit, created premiere musical works for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and Pilobolus Dance Theatre, and released four albums and a live performance DVD. He has collaborated with numerous artists, including T-Bone Burnett, Regina Spektor and Duncan Sheik.

This year’s Creative Advisors include George S. Clinton (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery); Osvaldo Golijov (Tetro, Youth Without Youth), Harry Gregson-Williams (Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Taking of Pelham 123); music supervisor and head of music at Lionsgate Tracy McKnight (The Groomsmen, Wordplay, Friends with Money); film editor/sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, Cold Mountain); David Newman (Death to Smoochy, Ice Age); Doreen Ringer Ross (Vice-President, Film/TV Relations at BMI); Ed Shearmur (The Merry Gentleman, Charlie’s Angels); and film-music agent William “Vasi” Vangelos (First Artists).

The Sundance Institute Composers Lab receives major support from BMI. Additional support for the 2009 Sundance Institute Film Composers Lab is generously provided by Apple, The Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, Hewlett Packard Company, H.P. Marketing, JBL Professional, LaCie, Mackie, Mark of the Unicorn, Native Instruments, Sony Business and Professional Products Company, Sony Media, Sony ProAudio, and Soundcraft.

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a not-for-profit organization that fosters the development of original storytelling in film and theatre, and presents the annual Sundance Film Festival. Internationally recognized for its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Angels in America, Spring Awakening, Boys Don’t Cry, Sin Nombre, Born into Brothels and Trouble the Water. www.sundance.org

Texas Composers Competition 2009

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The Stephen F. Austin State University School of Music and The International Society for Contemporary Music are pleased to announce the second annual Texas Composers Competition.

Winning works will receive a cash prize of $200 and be submitted, on behalf of the Texas delegation, to be considered for inclusion on the prestigious ISCM World Music Days 2010 to be held in Sydney, Australia (April 30- May 9, 2010).

Requirements:
Only works written in 2004 or later will be considered.
Works must fit one of the official categories listed at http://www.aurorafestival.com.au/availablecategories.html.
Composers must be residents of Texas.

Submissions:
Send score and recording (if available) at this time. Composers whose works are selected will be required to provide additional information as stipulated at: http://www.aurorafestival.com.au/submittingthroug.html.
Electronic submissions (encouraged) should be in standard file formats (Finale, Sibelius or PDF for scores, any standard audio format for recordings).

Composers may submit multiple works if desired.

Entries can be emailed to slias@sfasu.edu or mailed to:

Stephen Lias
SFA School of Music
PO Box 13043, SFA Station
Nacogdoches, TX 75962-3043

The deadline for receipt of materials (either electronic or by mail) is July 6, 2009.

The number of winners selected will be determined by the judges based on the quality and appropriateness of works submitted. SFA reserves the right not to award any submissions. Composers selected as 2008 winners of this award are ineligible.

Open Call for MMNY “Musical Handshakes”

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Make Music New York invites composers to submit entries for this year’s “musical handshake”.

The Event: Make Music NY is a unique, free outdoor celebration called “the largest music event ever to grace Gotham” (Metro New York). As part of the third annual festival, a new addition called “Mass Appeal” brings together hundreds of musicians forming ensembles of one type of instrument, including clarinets, french horns, ukuleles, hub caps, violas, accordions, saxophones, and more, that anyone can join in on.

The Open Call: MMNY is now accepting submissions for “musical handshakes” — a single melody serving as the secret lingua franca for Mass Appeal musicians on Sunday June 21st, 2009.

These musicians will use the winning “musical handshake” to greet one another throughout the day, beyond bands of instruments, with the hope that momentary handshakes will turn into longer, improvised musical conversations. In the evening, the composition will receive its public premiere at the “Mass Appeal” afterparty in Central Park.

The winning musical handshake will be selected by a panel of distinguished judges (including Bill Bragin of Lincoln Center and Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner of NY City Center), and announced in late May, giving one composer the honor of a Mass Appeal premiere on June 21st.

Submission Guidelines:

• A musical handshake is a short melody, up to 10 seconds long, consisting of two phrases, so that two musicians can use it to greet each other with a call and response.
• Nearly all instruments and all musicians – from amateurs to professionals – should be able to play the musical handshake.
• No more than two submissions per composer will be accepted.
• Entries are due by midnight on Friday May 1st, 2009.
• Entries must be submitted in standard musical notation.
• Please e-mail submissions as PDF attachments to musicalhandshake@makemusicny.org

Or mail your composition, on a single 8.5” x 11” piece of paper, to:

Mass Appeal “Musical Handshake”
c/o Make Music New York
PO Box 1164
New York, NY 10013

• Include your name, address, phone number, and email address on the same page as your composition. (Judges will not see this information when choosing a handshake.)
• Participants must be residents of the New York City area and in attendance on June 21st.
• By submitting a musical handshake, you affirm that the composition is your own, and agree that, if selected, your submission will become the property of Make Music New York, Inc.

For further information about the Musical Handshake or about Mass Appeal, please contact Elizabeth Ferguson, Mass Appeal Coordinator, at eferguson@makemusicny.org or at (510) 316-3061.

Lukas Foss Dies at 86

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Lukas Foss, a German-born American composer, pianist and conductor, died at his home in Manhattan on Sunday. He was 86 years old. His music has an important place in the world of American composition, along with the music of Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber and Elliott Carter. Mr. Foss was an explorer of the avant-garde, focusing at different times on techniques from serialism and electronic music as well as on Minimalism and improvisation. As a conductor, his specialty was contemporary music.

In addition to his wife Cornelia, he is survived by a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Eliza Foss.

Read the full New York Times article on Lukas Foss here.

Prix Ars Electronica 2009 – International Competition for CyberArts

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The 23rd Prix Ars Electronica – International Competition for CyberArts is open for entries.

From its very inception in 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has been conceived as an open platform for various disciplines at the intersection of art, technology, science and society. More than 3,000 submissions in 2008 have further enhanced the Prix Ars Electronica’s reputation as an internationally representative competition honoring outstanding works in the cyberarts.

The aim of the competition is to continually keep the Prix Ars Electronica updated in line with leading-edge developments in the dynamic field of cyberarts.

This year, six Golden Nicas, twelve Awards of Distinction and approximately 70 Honorary Mentions as well as [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant and the Media.Art.Research Award are presented to participants. The 2009 winners will receive a total of 122,500 euros in prize money.

Prix Ars Electronica 2009

Online Submission Deadline: March 6, 2009
Contact: info@prixars.aec.at

Categories:
Computer Animation / Film / VFX
Digital Musics
Interactive Art
Hybrid Art
Digital Communities
[the next idea] Grant
Media.Art.Research Award
u19 – freestyle computing

More details about all categories and online submission are available only online at: http://prixars.aec.at

The First Five College Composition Contest & Festival of New Music

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The University of Massachusetts Department of Music and Dance announces:

The First Five College Composition Contest & Festival of New Music (September 11 to September 13 2009)

Call for Scores:

– Composers under the age of thirty-five are invited to submit compositions for consideration to the First Five College Composition Contest. Instrumentation should consist of any of Flute (alto and piccolo), Clarinet (Bass Clarinet), Violin, Violoncello, Piano and Percussion. Works that employ live performance with electronics and works that involve projected visual media are acceptable.

– Works composed before September 1, 2006 will not be considered.

– The due date for scores is March 29, 2009. Only one score per applicant is allowed.

– At the time of the application composers should submit one score and a set of performance materials. Compact disc recordings, if available may also be submitted are not required. A cover sheet with your name, address, telephone and email address and the title of your composition is required.

– Please include a self-addressed envelope with proper postage if you wish your material to be returned.

– Only one winner will be chosen.

– A $35 check made payable to the Department of Music and Dance, UMass Amherst must accompany all applications.

– Address all submissions to:
Prof. Salvatore Macchia
Five College New Music Festival
Department of Music and Dance
The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst MA, 01002

The winner will receive a cash award of $1000 (one thousand) and his or her piece will be presented as part of an “Emerging Composers Concert” that will be held on Saturday September 12, 2009.

Website: www.5cnmf.com

Elliott Carter celebrates 100th birthday

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NEW YORK (AFP) — US composer Elliott Carter, one of the USA’s greatest living artists, celebrated his 100th birthday Thursday.

Major concerts were planned to mark the centenary in New York, London and Paris, according to the website www.carter100.com.

Described by 20th century classical music giant Aaron Copland as “one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field,” Carter has been a major force for five decades.

In 1960 he won the first of two Pulitzer prizes with his groundbreaking String Quartet Number Two.

His 1961 Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras and his 1967 Piano Concerto were described by Russian genius Igor Stravinsky as “masterpieces.”

But Carter, who has been awarded Germany’s Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and France’s Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,” never rested on his laurels.

He composed no fewer than nine pieces in 2007 and is scheduled to have written another seven by the end of this year.

The 2009 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award

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The University of Illinois School of Music presents:

The 2009 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award

Eligibility: Any composer, regardless of age or nationality.

Awards: First Prize cash award of $1000 and second prize cash award of $500 plus performances by the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble in the fall of 2009 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Additional awards and performances may be given at the discretion of the judges.

Judges: A panel of judges consisting of University of Illinois music composition faculty members will select the winning compositions. The winning composers are expected to attend the award concert/reception and will be responsible for their transportation costs (the competition will provide a stipend for lodging). The winning composers will assume full responsibility for providing adequate performance materials upon request.

Guidelines:
1. Medium: Full scores of any style or aesthetic direction for one to fifteen performers (including vocalists) may be submitted. Works for tape, electronics and/or mixed media with or without instruments/voices are eligible.
2. Duration: 20 minutes maximum
3. Limit: One entry per composer
4. Entry fee: A non-refundable entry fee of fifteen U.S. dollars ($15.00) in the form of a check must be included with each submission. All checks must be payable to the University of Illinois, and must be an international money order or drawn on a U.S. bank.
5. Anonymous Submission: The composer’s name must not appear on the score itself or on any item (tape, CD, etc.) submitted in supplement to the application. A sealed envelope must accompany the score and contain the composer’s name, address, telephone number/e-mail (if applicable) and a brief biographical sketch. If a recording of the work is available, it should accompany the score and be identified only by the title of the composition.
6. Return of Materials: Scores will not be returned unless a self-addressed, stamped envelope of the proper size is enclosed.
7. Previous winners and faculty and currently-enrolled students at the University of Illinois are ineligible for the competition.

Send submissions to:
2009 Martirano Composition Award
Attn: Zack Browning, Director, Martirano Award
2136 Music Building
University of Illinois
1114 West Nevada
Urbana, IL 61801 USA
zbrownin@illinois.edu
http://camil.music.uiuc.edu/CompTheory/Awards/Martirano.html

All submissions must be postmarked by February 27, 2009.

New Music Needs Your Voice

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The American Music Center (AMC) and American Composers Forum (ACF) have teamed up with Columbia University’s Research Center for Arts and Culture to conduct the first major study of living composers. The study aims to gather important data to guide our efforts in better serving and advocating for composers of all styles and backgrounds.

If you are a composer, you can be a part of this important research. We invite you to contribute to the study by filling out the online survey at the link below. The survey is estimated to take 20 minutes of your time. Your participation will broaden the study’s reach and give us a better understanding of current trends in the field. Thank you for helping us to help composers.

This survey is over…