2024 Call for Scores
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival seeks works for string quartet 7-15 minutes in length from composers under the age of 30 (as of June 25, 2023). Composers must be citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. and are only permitted to submit one score for consideration. Submissions are due April 15, 2024 and the entry fee is $25*.
The jury will select two works and will award a prize of $1000 and $500 for the top first and second work, respectively. Winning entries will be announced May 15, 2024. Parts should be prepared immediately upon notification. The winning works will be premiered at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival by GMCMF Fellows between June 23 and July 21. The composer will be invited to discuss the work with the musicians the day prior to the performance for an internal audience. GMCMF will provide local transportation as well as 2 nights of accommodation and meals for winning entries. It is the responsibility of the composers to provide their own transportation to Colchester, VT.
The call is now closed.
*If there is demonstrated financial need, entry fee can be waived. Please email astenroos@gmcmf.org for more information.
2023 Call for Scores winners!
1st place: Nicky Sohn "Burning"
2nd place: Kian Ravaei "Family Photos"
Whether composing piano preludes inspired by mythical creatures, flute melodies that mimic the songs of endangered birds, or a string quartet that draws from the Iranian music of his ancestral heritage, composer Kian Ravaei (b. 1999) takes listeners on a spellbinding tour of humanity’s most deeply felt emotions.
Ravaei has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Eliot Fisk, Bella Hristova, Salastina, and Juventas New Music Ensemble, and has served as a Copland House CULTIVATE Fellow and a Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Composer Teaching Artist Fellow. In recent months, Ravaei was featured on an episode of Performance Today, America’s most popular classical music radio program. His string quartet Family Photos has garnered numerous awards, including First Prize in the Spectrum Chamber Music Composition Competition, Second Prize in the instrumental chamber music division of the American Prize, and Honorable Mention in the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition. DJs know Ravaei as the go-to person for creating orchestral versions of dance songs, including Wooli & Codeko’s “Crazy feat. Casey Cook (Orchestral).”
Ravaei counts celebrated composers Richard Danielpour, Derek Bermel, and Tarik O’Regan among his teachers. He is an alumnus of UCLA and the Curtis Institute of Music Young Artist Summer Program.
From ballet to opera to Korean traditional-orchestra, the wide-ranging talent of composer Nicky Sohn (b.1992) is sought after across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Characterized by her jazz-inspired, rhythmically driven themes, Sohn’s work has been described as “like John Adams’ ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’ on steroids” (YourObserver), “dynamic and full of vitality” (The Korea Defense Daily), and having “elegant wonder” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). As a result, Sohn has enjoyed commissions from the world’s preeminent performing arts institutions, including sold-out performances at the Stuttgart Ballet, The National Orchestra of Korea, Minnesota Orchestra, and Sarasota Orchestra.
Recent highlights include an orchestral premiere by the St. Louis Symphony overseen by John Adams, as well as commissions and performances from the National Orchestra Institute and Festival, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Sarasota Orchestra, and the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra. Sohn has also collaborated with chamber ensembles such as the Kinetic Ensemble (composer-in-residence 2022-23) and Lucia Lin (Boston Symphony), Carpe Diem String Quartet, Bergamot Quartet, and Atlanta Chamber Players. Current projects for Sohn include an orchestral work for the Annapolis Symphony, a piano quintet for Dacamera's season opener featuring the Isidore Quartet and pianist Sarah Rothenberg, and a chamber work for the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra. Nicky Sohn is pursuing a fully-funded doctoral degree at the Shepherd School of Music of Rice University and holds degrees from Juilliard School and Mannes College of Music.
Call for Scores 2023
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival seeks works for string quartet 7-15 minutes in length from composers under the age of 30 (as of June 25, 2023). Composers must be citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. and are only permitted to submit one score for consideration. Submissions are due April 15, 2023 and the entry fee is $25*.
The jury will select two works and will award a prize of $1000 and $500 for the top first and second work, respectively. Winning entries will be announced May 15, 2023. Parts should be prepared immediately upon notification. The winning works will be premiered at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival by GMCMF Fellows between June 25 and July 23. The composer will be invited to discuss the work with the musicians the day prior to the performance for an internal audience and attend the performance the following day. GMCMF will provide local transportation as well as 2 nights of accommodation and meals for winning entries and it would be the responsibility of the composers to provide their own transportation to and from Colchester, VT.
*If there is demonstrated financial need, entry fee can be waived. Please email astenroos@gmcmf.org before applying for more information.
Judges
A native of Taiwan, composer Yu-Hui Chang began her intensive music training in piano, voice, and music theory at the age of six, and started seriously pursuing composition as a career at the age of fourteen. After teaching at UC Davis for 7 years, she has been on the composition faculty at Brandeis University since 2006. Her music is characterized by energy, precision, ingenious effects, and vibrant colors – all in the pursuit of a deep connection with humanity. She strives to break through cultural and stylistic boundaries, and to take an inclusive view of musical diversity. This attitude is manifested in the multifaceted quality of her compositional output, and the stylistic fluidity in her writing.
Yu-Hui is the recipient of two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and commissions from Fromm, Koussevitzky, Barlow, Naumburg, and Meet The Composer (now New Music USA). She has also been recognized by the Aaron Copland Award, Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, and the Council for Cultural Affairs of the Executive Yuan (Taiwanese government agency). Her compositions have been performed throughout the U.S. and across Europe, Asia and Oceania to critical acclaim. Among the numerous commissions she has received are those from BMOP, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, Volti, Ju Percussion Group, Monadnock Music Festival, Arts Council Korea, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center of Taiwan, and many others.
Composer Mara Gibson is originally from Charlottesville, VA, graduated from Bennington College, and completed her Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo. She has received grants and honors from the American Composer’s Forum, the Banff Center, Louisiana Division of the Arts, ArtsKC, Meet the Composer, the Kansas Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Bass Society, ASCAP, the John Hendrick Memorial Commission, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the MacDowell Colony and Yale University. Internationally renowned ensembles and soloists perform her music throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Asia, and Europe. Dr. Gibson has had performances of her works at prestigious festivals and universities around the country and the world, most notably the Bowling Green New Music Festival (Ohio), Amici Della Musica (Udine, Italy), University of Melbourne (Australia), Thailand International Composition Festival (performances in multiple consecutive years), Reaktorhallen (Stockholm, Sweden), Daegu International Computer Music Festival (Korea) and the Beijing Modern Music Festival.
Dr. Gibson has taught at the UMKC Conservatory as Associate Professor where she was the founder of the UMKC Composition Workshop and co-director/founder of ArtSounds. Starting fall 2017, she joined the faculty of Louisiana State University where she is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Area Head with tenure. Mara released her first compilation CD ArtIfacts May 2015, with her second CD Skyborn released in November 2017 and in 2020, she was selected through PARMA Recordings for their recording project with the Athens Philharmonic Orchestra with Secret Sky (Prisma V). Her compositions span numerous media, from chamber and solo works to electroacoustic music and a collection of works that combine video, electronic music and live performance. In her most recent work she incorporates extra-musical materials into vocal and instrumental performance, and integrates increasingly challenging subject matter with effective (and often unusual) instrumental and vocal delivery styles; these techniques extend performance practice and portray strong emotional content that defines the heart of her overall concept — the arc of the musical and theatrical development.
Recently, she completed her bassoon concerto, Escher Keys (2021) which is gaining recognition by the American Prize in two categories, funded through a Louisiana Board of Regents (ATLAS grant). During her sabbatical (fall 2023) she will be working on her first opera at the prestigious Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France.
Salvatore Macchia holds a BM from the Hartt School of Music; and an MMA and DMA from Yale University. He studied bass with Bertram Turetzky, Joseph Iadone, Gary Karr and William Rhein, and composition with Yehudi Wyner and Hal Overton. He is currently Professor of Composition and String Bass at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Macchia has performed in the European and jazz traditions throughout America and Europe, and has been the contrabass soloist with the Berkshire Choral Festival Orchestra, Dinosaur Annex under Gunther Schuller, Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestra (where he serves as principal bass), Jazz Composer's Orchestra and at the Boston Festival of Quarter Tone Music. He has premiered nearly 100 compositions featuring the doublebass.
Macchia appears with the Duo Cambiata, Iadone Consort (as violonist) and Ritornello (as gambist). A former member of Musica Oggi and Chamber Music Plus, he was a founding member of the Ancora Chamber Ensemble. His compositions have been performed throughout America, in Europe, the former Soviet Union and Japan, including performances at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland, American Academy in Rome, the Computer Arts Festival in Padua, Italy, and the Aspen and Monadnock Festivals in the U.S. His recent commissions are from: Interensemble (Padua, Italy), The New England Chamber Music and Composers Forum, Harvard Summer Dance Theater, Pioneer Valley Symphony; multiple commissions from Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Mohawk Trail Concert Series, UMass Amherst Opera Workshop, Dorn Press and Gasparo Records.
Macchia's works have been published by the Rinaldo and Dorn Presses. A former member of the faculty at the University of Evansville, Southern Illinois University, University of the Pacific, Amherst and Bennington Colleges, he can be heard on the Gasparo, Open Loop, CRI and Spectrum labels.