The Prize:

One Winner receives a $500 cash prize as well as a performance of his or her work at the 2012 Look & Listen Festival in New York City. The concerts feature performances of 20th and 21st Century music by talented and rigorous professional performers.

Please note: the deadline for the 2012 Prize has passed. We will be announcing a winner in the coming months.

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2011 Look & Listen Composers Competition

WINNER

Zibuokle Martinaityte
Driving Force
For trombone, tenor saxophone and accordion. Commissioned by Gaida festival (Lithuania).
The piece was premiered in 2004 during “Gaida” festival (Vilnius, Lithuania) by Mike Svoboda (trombone), Liudas Mockunas (tenor saxophone) and Raimondas Sviackevicius (accordion).
In the process of writing Driving Force, I was consciously trying to grasp where the driving force of this work emanates from. The unique combination of instruments encouraged an inventiveness and unexpectedly, I was inspired by the harmony of Baroque cadences as well as Baroque melismas, which are easily detectable in the composition.
see an excerpt of the score
listen

FINALISTS

Heather Stebbins
again and again, however we know this landscape
Performers: eighth blackbird (Matt Albert, Nick Photinos, Michael Maccaferri, Lisa Kaplan, Matthew Duvall, Tim Munro). Recorded at a live reading at the University of Richmond, Richmond VA.
again and again, however we know this landscape is a sonic rendering of slowly evolving musical colors.
see an excerpt of the score
listen

Eleanor Aversa
Sonora: 6 desert songs for clarinet and unpitched …
Each of these six movements uses clarinet in combination with one or two portable percussion instruments. This clip contains excerpts of all 6 movements, and is taken from a 2010 studio recording with Bill Kalinkos on clarinet and Gabe Globus-Hoenich on percussion. The movements are Noon, Sagauro and Mesquite, Mirage, Lizards, 4am, and Rain.
see an excerpt of the score
listen

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2010 Look & Listen Festival Prize

WINNER

Dan Visconti
Love Bleeds Radiant
Kronos Quartet
David Harrington and John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jeff Ziegler (vc.).
Recorded live on January 14th, 2006 at Dartmouth College (Hopkins Center)
see the score
listen

FINALISTS

Jacob Gotlib
The Slow Splintering
Ensemble SurPlus
Stefan Häussler (violin I), Thomas Avery (violin II), Jessica Rona (viola), Beverley Ellis (violoncello)
“The Slow Splintering” loosely follows the sonic and physical trajectory of glass shattering — an initial explosion, a cracking and fissuring, a breaking apart into shards, and the settling of those shards — in slow motion, taking place over 12 minutes and 24 seconds.
see the score
listen

Andrea La Rose
Grunt Work for the Avant garde
Anti-Social Music and the individual performers
John Wriggle (solo trombone), Ken Thomson, (clarinet), Hubert Chen (violin), Pat Muchmore (cello), Kamala Sankaram (accordion)
see an excerpt of the score
listen

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Past Winners:

2003 Mei-Fang Lin
2004 Peter Gilbert
2005 Panayiotis Kokoras
2006 Erin Gee
2007 Izzi Ramkissoon
2008 Nathan Davis
2009 Paul Leary
2010 Dan Visconti
2011 Zibuokle Martinaityte