Young Composers Win!

ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams has announced the recipients of the 2010 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. The young composers will be recognized at the annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards at The Times Center in New York on May 27, 2010.
Commenting on the awards, Paul Williams said, “The ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Awards program provides recognition and cash awards to gifted young composers of Concert Music. There were 730 submissions this year and our dedicated jury selected 37 composers between the ages of 13 and 29 years of age. We congratulate the recipients and thank our ASCAP composer judges for their efforts to select these talented young creators, who represent the bright future of American Concert Music.”
The ASCAP composer/judges were Kathryn Alexander, Steven Burke, Chen Yi, Daniel Felsenfeld, Kamran Ince, Philip Rothman, Christopher Theofanidis,and Aleksandra Vrebalov.
Established in 1979, with funding from the Jack and Amy Norworth Memorial Fund, The ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Awards program grants cash prizes to young Concert Music composers up to 30 years of age whose works are selected through a juried national competition. These composers may be American citizens, permanent residents, or students possessing US Student Visas.
Morton Gould, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, served as President of ASCAP and The ASCAP Foundation from 1986 – 1994. Gould, an eminent and versatile American composer, was a child prodigy whose first composition was published by G. Schirmer when he was only six years of age. To honor Gould’s lifelong commitment to encouraging young creators, the annual ASCAP Foundation Young Composer program was dedicated to his memory, following his death in 1996.
The award-winning composers share prizes of approximately $45,000, including the Leo Kaplan Award, in memory of the distinguished attorney who served as ASCAP Special Distribution Advisor, the Charlotte V. Bergen Scholarship for a composer 18 years of age or younger, and grants from The ASCAP Foundation Jack and Amy Norworth Fund. Jack Norworth wrote such standards as "Shine On Harvest Moon" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The Awards are also sponsored by Avid, the company who creates technology that people use to make the most listened to, most watched and most loved media in the world, which generously awards the recipients with a complimentary copy of Sibelius software.
The 2010 Morton Gould Young Composer Award recipients are listed with their current residence, and place of origin: Samuel Carl Adams of New Haven, CT (San Francisco, CA); Travis Alford of Watertown, MA (Rocky Mount, NC); Preben Antonsen of New Haven, CT (Seattle, WA); Karl Blench of Houston, TX (Providence, RI); Stephen Cabell of New York, NY (Owensboro, KY); Christopher Cerrone New Haven, CT (Huntington, NY); Louis Chiappetta Cleveland, OH (White Plains, NY); Henry L. Dorn, III of Little Rock, AR; Ted Goldman of New York, NY; Takuma Itoh of Ithaca, NY (Hiratsuka, Japan); Adrian Knight of New Haven, CT (Stockholm, Sweden); Matti Kovler of Boston, MA (Moscow, Russia); Visnja Krzic of Los Angeles, CA (Belgrade, Serbia); Wlad Marhulets of New York, NY (Minsk, Belarus); Missy Mazzoli of Brooklyn, NY (Abington, PA); Eric Nathan of Ithaca, NY (New York, NY); Garth K. Neustadter of Manitowoc, WI (Green Bay, WI); Nicholas S. Omiccioli of South Kansas City, MO (Scott AFB, IL); Aaron Severini of New York, NY (Greenfield, MA); Jonathan Sokol of Bloomington, IN (Cleveland, OH); Christopher Stark of Ithaca, NY (St. Ignatius, MT); Wang Lu of New York, NY (Xi’ an, China); Conrad Winslow of New York, NY (Homer, AK); Daniel Wohl of Brooklyn, NY (Paris, France); Peiying Yuanof Kansas City, MO (Singapore); and Zhou Juan of Kansas City, MO (Xinjiang, China).
The youngest ASCAP Foundation Composer Award recipients range in age from 13 to 17 and are listed by state of residence: Tim Callobre, age 16 (CA); Thomas Feng, age 15 (CA); Phillip Golub, age 17 (CA); Peng-Peng Gong, age 17 (NY); Saad Haddad,age 17 (CA); Molly Joyce, age 17 (PA); Yeeren I. Low, age 13 (PA); Thomas Reeves, age 15 (NY); Conrad Tao, age 15 (NY); Daniel Valentine, age 17 (NV); and Robert Yaman, age 16 (MI).
The following composers received Honorable Mention: Carolyn Chen of La Jolla, CA (Redbank, NJ); Stephen Feigenbaum of Winchester, MA (Cambridge, MA); David Kirkland Garnerof Durham, NC (Atlanta, GA); Aaron Gervais of San Francisco, CA (Edmonton, Canada); Polina Nazaykinskaya of New Haven, CT (Togliatti, Russia); Elizabeth Ogonek of Garfield, NJ (Anoka, MN); Gitty H. Razaz of New York, NY (Tehran, Iran); Peter Thompson of Severna Park, MD (St. Paul, MN); and Feinan Wang of New Haven, CT (Zhejiang, China).
In the youngest category, the following composers received Honorable Mention: Yihan Chen, age 15 (IN); Graham Cohen, age 11 (AZ); Andrew Hsu age 15 (PA); Timothy Laciano, age 16 (NJ); Siddarth Viswanathan, age 17 (NJ); and Seho Youngage 12 (MA).