A4 Composition Competition
A4 Brass Quartet has announced the launch of its 4th annual composition competition to celebrate the ensemble’s 10th anniversary in 2023. Following a 1-year hiatus from the event, the quartet is once again looking forward to welcoming entries from around the world to the competition, which across its previous three instalments, has attracted just shy of 100 new works for brass ensemble. A spokesperson from the group commented, “The composition competition is our bid to encourage the next generation of brass chamber writers and promote our mantra of innovation and new music to our concert audiences throughout the year. We warmly welcome submissions from composers at any stage of their musical development and from all backgrounds, in particular those from under-represented demographics.”
The brief for the compositions is very free, but the following must apply to each entry:
• Compositions MUST be of 4-8 minutes in duration
• Submitted works MUST never have been performed before
• Instrumentation of: Bb Cornet (doubling Flugel), Tenor Horn in Eb, Baritone Horn in Bb (treble clef) and Euphonium in Bb (treble clef)
• Mutes are available if required for all instruments
• It is NOT necessary to submit scores anonymously
• Please consider score/part presentation, practicality and suitability for concert performance for the entry
• Compositions which utilise electronics or audio backing tracks are welcome.
• Entries MUST contain a set of both TRANSPOSED score and parts and accompanying audio sample (if appropriate).
Once again, A4 offers a healthy £850 prize fund, and aims to encourage a new generation of student composers with a special Under 24 award (if both 1st and 2nd prize fall into this category, the next highest U24 entry will receive this award).
1st Prize - £500 and regular performances on the quartet’s 10th anniversary concert series in 2022/23.
2nd Prize - £250
Under 24 Prize* - £100
*not already in the highest 2 places
Scores can be submitted as either a Sibelius file or as PDF files accompanied by an mp3/m4a file and need to be emailed to a4brassquartet@hotmail.co.uk with ‘A4 COMPOSITION COMPETITION’ in the subject line. The closing date for entries is Friday 2nd September 2022, with finalists and subsequent award winners being announced in early October. Entries will be judged by all 4 members of the quartet, with the finalists also being judged by external professionals from across both the brass performance and composition world. Previous judges have included Bramwell Tovey, Edward Gregson, Paul Hindmarsh, Gary Carpenter, Dr David Thornton and David Horne.
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