We are very excited to announce the winners of our 2024 8SW Composer Competition.
This is our fourth cycle of the 8SW Composer Competition, which started in 2018. Why hold a competition? A fairly simple answer — we believe in the art of chamber music. It is a special genre of music that involves communication between a small group of players, and the composer to create a work of art. Being able to work together, find solutions to differences of opinion and interpretation — a good metaphor for what the world could use more of today, no? We want to encourage this past the twenty-first century.
And selfishly, we get some wonderful works written for our trio –– and hopefully for other flute, viola and cello players to come.
This year, we received entries from all over the world, and yet again, we were impressed by the high quality of music we received. We had a particularly high number of entrants from French-speaking lands.
Both rounds of the competition are adjudicated completely anonymously. Neither our first round judges or we, the trio, have any information about the composers until after decisions have been made. All decisions are based exclusively on the quality of the work.
Our panel of composer-judges listened to the ALL the works submitted for the first round, and ranked them, choosing their top 3 or 4 but commenting on all of the works.
After the first round was complete, our competition manager, Kallie Dell’olio totaled up the scores. At that point we had four top works, and two tied for 3rd place.
Then Suzanne, Matt, and I got to work. First we listened to the sound files submitted with the scores. Since, to qualify, the works cannot have been given a formal performance, most composers submit computer-generated MIDI files. The quality of MIDI really varies. If you want to appreciate live performance, listen to some MIDI files. One composer actually sent a live “workshop” performance of their work. Congratulations to them for finding three friends to jump into the studio to record that work –– not easy to do!
After listening and studying the scores, we whittled our choices down to our three top works.
So we took out the instruments and chopped through these pieces. “Chop” is literal –– most of these pieces are not sight-readable, but we are able to get a good overview this way. We can see what works and if there are big notational issues in the piece, although we don’t necessarily eliminate a piece if it has a few compositional issues. We see the competition as an educational outreach, and as long as the bones are good and we feel we can work with the composer, a work with “issues” can still be in contention.
By the end of the session, we were all unified in our decision. We had found the work that was the winner, and it was the same one the first round panel had come to as well!
But before we get to the winners, a few quick thank you’s.
Thank you to our first round judges, all of which are composers we admire and who have composed works for Eight Strings & a Whistle. This year we had three returning judges: Doug Anderson, Edmund Cionek and Martin Rokeach. Joining us for the first time, but hopefully not last, is Pamela Sklar. Thank you all for your hard work and excellent insights.
And thank you to Kallie, who handled all communications with the entrants, the judges, and us. She stayed on top of all the paperwork and kept things super organized.
And so now, with no more delay our 2024 winners…
Coming in Third: Sword on a Rainy Day by Keisuke Yokota. Keisuke is working on a Master’s of Music degree at ARTS2 -Conservatoire Royal de Mons in Belgium.
Second Place: Mihlin Flies to The Moon on A Ginkgo Leaf by Alexander Howard. Alexander is a student at the Manhattan School of Music (Matt’s and my alma mater!) where he is pursuing a BM in Composition.
And the First Prize goes to… big drum role…
Zoe Yost, for her work Midsummer’s Daydream! Zoe is a violist (woohoo!!) and composer. She is currently a sophomore at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying composition with Dr. David Conte and viola performance with Dimitri Murrath. Want to check out some of Zoe’s music? Go to her SoundCloud page or her YouTube channel.
Congratulations to all. We are very excited to get working on Midsummer’s Daydream and to perform it next November. And we look forward to getting to know Zoe as well.
A final thanks to all who entered the competition. We are inspired by all the pieces we received and so happy to see high quality chamber music springing to life in the 21st Century.
