TURNmusic New Music Competition

TURNmusic New Collegiate Composition Prize

2019 Collegiate Composition Prize

Guidelines

A composer currently attending any New England, northern New York, or Quebec College or University is invited to submit an original score for consideration for the TURNmusic Collegiate Composition Prize.
Compositions must have been completed within the past two years.
Compositions may be in any style.
The composer must submit a PDF score, parts, mp3 audio file and the Application for Submission via email. Please include in the subject line of your email the following: TURNmusic Submission <LAST NAME>. Scores must be accurate and legible. No handwritten manuscript will be accepted.

No work may be over 8 minutes in duration.
Only one composition may be submitted for consideration in the competition
The composition selection committee reserves the right to not make an award if, in the opinion of the committee, no composition is appropriately deserving.

Ensemble

Select any combination of the following (1-8 players)

1 Flute (doubling Alto Flute and/or Piccolo)

1 B flat Clarinet (or Bass Clarinet )

1 Piano

2 Violin

1 Viola

1 Cello

1 Double Bass

1 Guitar (acoustic or electric)

Electronics

A score and performance parts must be submitted.
The use of multi-media is acceptable

Previous Winners

2018 Winner: Andy Gagnon

Andy Gagnon

A native of Hardwick, Vermont, Andy Gagnon has worked across the world as a performer, composer, and educator. Gagnon's music has been performed from the clubs of New York and Boston to the concert halls of China and the music festivals of Colombia. Andy is currently working on is MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont.

As an educator, Gagnon has worked at The Governor's Institute on the Arts, The Vermont Jazz Camp, U-32's summer jazz camp, the Get Thee to the Funnery camp in Barre, and the Green Mountain Youth Symphony Summer C.A.M.P. He has also served as a composition mentor for students working with Music-COMP. Gagnon currently teaches instrumental, vocal, and general music at Stowe Middle School and instrumental music at Stowe Elementary School.

Gagnon regularly performs with The Renegade Groove, The Vermont Jazz Ensemble, and PURPLE feat. Craig Mitchel, which won recognition from The Seven Days for being voted the best tribute band in Vermont. Gagnon has served as a sideman and studio musician for a wide variety of artists including Ray Vega, Eugene Uman, Dennis McNeil, Eric Lindberg, Elizabeth!, and Myra Flynn.

Gagnon lives in Waterbury with his wife Leah, their dogs Spock and Kiwi, and Poppy Seed the chinchilla.

2017 Winner: Zhuosheng Jin

Zhuosheng Jin

"With his music which has been described as “powerful” and “haunting” (The New York Times), Zhuosheng Jin, born in 1991, Ningbo, China, is a composer, pianist, and author. Jin’s music spans on a variety of instrumentations and mediums, including orchestra, chamber, solo, electronic, and film music. Throughout his works, Jin has been interested in relationships between gesture and sound. His pieces are often comprised of two or more alternating musical gestures in different shapes, registers, instrumentations, and sounding effects. He uses local gestural processes to combine with subtle timbral changes. Composition for him is about how one or more musical gestures go from a starting point to a destination point with richness of sound varieties and rational procedures.

Zhuosheng Jin

Since 2005, Jin’s pieces have been performed worldwide in June in Buffalo Music Festival (US), Etchings New Music Festival (France), Composit New Music Festival (Italy), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), Atlantic New Music Festival (US), and Boston University Center of New Music, etc., and by ensembles and musicians such as the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Mdi, Ensemble ECCE, TimeArt Studio, Joa Helgesson, and Giacomo Baldelli, etc. The scores of his pieces are published by the Central Conservatory Press in Beijing.

Jin began to study piano at the age of seven, and then composition at thirteen. He holds degrees from Oberlin College (BA ‘15) and Boston University (MM ‘17), and is currently a DMus. fellow in McGill University with Philippe Leroux. Among his former teachers in composition are Xiaogang Ye, Joshua Fineberg, Josh Levine, and Alex Mincek, and his keyboard teachers (piano, harpsichord, and fortepiano) include Shuxing Zheng, Robert Shannon, Webb Wiggins, and David Breitman. Jin also followed lessons and master-classes with Beat Furrer, Pierluigi Billone, Stefano Gervasoni, Raphael Cendo, Franck Bedrossian, and Henrik Hellstenius, et al.

Jin has also worked as an author, director, and curator. Projects include “At the Last Day” (director, screenwriter, and leading actor; short drama, 2009), “Funeral of Adam” (director, screenwriter, and leading actor; film, 2012), “Eyes and Mind” (curator and sound director; art exhibition, 2015), and “HOME” (sound artist, installation, 2017), etc.

Jin works as a teaching assistant in McGill University, and has also previously taught at Boston University. His lectures have been highly acclaimed in several Chinese universities and were warmly welcomed by students."

2016 Winner: Stephanie Meyers

Stephanie Meyers

Turnmusic presents our 2016 Collegiate Composition winner, Stephanie Meyers. Stepjamie's piece, Paracusis, will be performed on June 17 at ArtsRiot and June 19 in the Green Mountain Club in Waterbury.

Stephanie Meyers is a piano-attacking chanteuse who divides her time between songwriting and composing chamber music. She resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attends Vermont College of Fine Arts' Music Composition MFA program where she has studied with John Mallia, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and Roger Zahab. In March 2016, her first chamber work "String Quartet No. 1" received a Merit Award from Tribeca New Music in their Young Composer Competition, and won first prize in TURNMusic's Collegiate Competition. She is currently writing a chamber work for clarinet, accordion, trumpet, and bass. Additionally, she's seeking a benefactor/patron/wealthy music aficionado who's interested in financing the production of her second album (a collection of all the songs she's written within the last two years)

2015 Winner: ERBERK ERYILMAZ

Dances of the Yogurt Maker - Erberk Eryilmaz

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ERBERK ERYILMAZ

Turkish composer, pianist, conductor Erberk Eryılmaz was born in Samsun, Turkey in 1989. He started his music education when he was three and has studied at the Samsun Conservatory, Hacettepe University - Ankara State Conservatory and at the Hartt School. He has studied composition with Serdar Mukhatov, Stephen Gryc, Robert Carl, David Macbride and Leonardo Balada; piano with Nuran Taşpınar, Oxana Yablonskaya, Gulmira Tokombaeva and Margreet Francis; conducting with Christopher Zimmerman, Edward Cumming, and Robert Page. He is currently pursuing his Artist Diploma in composition at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies with Reza Vali.

He has also had private studies with world-famous pianists such as Idil Biret, Andrej Jasinski, Vicenzo Balzani, Stanislav Pochekin, Felix Gottlieb, and composers Bright Sheng, Joan Tower, Chen Yi, William Bolcom, and John Corigliano.

Eryılmaz has received numerous awards such as 1st prize for his Sonata for Piano in the SCI/ASCAP(North East) Composition Competition, grand prize as a pianist at The Van Rooy Competition for Musical Excellence, the Diemente Prize from the Hartt School's Composition Department, 2013 Carnegie Mellon String Quartet Competition with his Miniatures Set No.4, Silberman Chamber Music Competition with the performance of Crumb's "Vox Balanae", and he is also the winner of the Pittsburgh Symphony Student Composers Competition with Tepki 2 which also won Carnegie Mellon University, Harry G.Archer Orchestra Composition Competition, and his recent work, "Dances of the Yoğurt Maker" won 2014 Carnegie Mellon String Quartet Competition. In the same year, he received the BNY Mellon Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, and won Apollo Chamber Players' International Composition Commissioning Contest.

As a composer, pianist, and a conductor he has collaborated with many ensembles including the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Hacettepe Chamber Orchestra, Gazi Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, Hartt Symphony, Wind Ensemble, Foot in the Door, Carpe Diem and Tesla String Quartets as well as with musicians including Vakhtang Matchavariani, Dmitry Yablonsky, Leonard Slatkin, Edward Cumming, Glen Adsit, Andres Cardenes, Robert Black (from Bang on a can), and Esra Pehlivanlı. He is the founder and former artistic director/conductor of the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra.

Eryılmaz has been featured several times on Turkish State Radio, WWUH in Connecticut, and also Açık Radyo in Istanbul. Turkish State Television produced a documentary based on his musical career as part of series called "The Succesful Turkish People in the United States". The Ministry of Education's required English Class Book for 7th grade elementary schools in Turkey includes a unit on Erberk Eryılmaz. His piece Tepki 1 (Reaction 1) was the subject of a short film by Aytaç Akkan Karagüzel.

His compositions, performances and recordings have received praise by Fanfare Magazine, CNN Turk, Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, and the Washington Post where his music has been described as a “dervish-like explosion”.

Eryılmaz is the founder/co-director of Hoppa Project.

For more information: erberkeryilmaz.com