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Thank You !
Our sincere thanks goes out to the many composers of all ages and skills who submitted their work to this year's music challenge. Not only was there heavy participation stateside, but there were also many international submissions – as close to us as Canada and Mexico and as far as Russia and Australia.
Styles of music ranged from orchestral dances, to a cello concerto, to ambitious symphonic overtures. While most submissions presented music without a narrative theme, others had titles with topics that ran from waging battles to walking the dog; from religious or mythical references to nightmares and earthquakes. |
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There were so many excellent entries in this year's challenge that it was difficult to narrow winning scores to only thirteen. In addition to the Grand Prize winner, the following three Finalists and nine Runner-Up winners came out ahead of a long list of other composers in the three contestant categories, some by a margin as nail-biting close as two or three points!
The compositions below posted with the permission of the Finalist winners. No part of a selection below may be duplicated or reproduced without the prior written consent of the composer.
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FINALIST: PROFESSIONAL COMPOSERS |
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David Coscina
Milton, Ontario, Canada |
Give a listen to David's composition: Musashi Suite for Orchestra
Professional Finalist - David Coscina
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David has been creating music through technology since he was 16, five years after he started writing music down with paper and pencil at the piano. Through high school and college you'd find David playing trombone in jazz and concert bands. After studying composition at York University with James Tenney, he went on to score a number of independent Canadian films. In 1999, his work for the film My Father's Hands earned him a nomination for Best Original Score at the Golden Sheaf Awards. More recently, he came away as a Finalist in the Yamaha International Music Production Contest. He continues to compose a large body of work, from small pieces to a full-length ballet, part of which he submitted for the challenge.
About His Composition
David's Japanese-influenced suite is a collection of music motives and theme groups he is in the process of expanding into a complete ballet based on famed samurai, Miyamoto Musashi.
About NOTION, in His Words
NOTION allows me to directly translate the ideas I have onto the proverbial page and realize every musical idea fully with its ease of use. There are some very involved rhythmic figures and performance techniques in my Musashi piece that would have been constraining if I hadn't used this program.
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FINALIST: EMERGING COMPOSERS |
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John McIntyre
Shelburne, Ontario, Canada |
Give a listen to John's composition: Festive Overture
Emerging Finalist - John McIntyre
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Orchestral composer John McIntyre attended the University of Western Ontario, McMaster University, and Laurentian University (Nipissing) – and holds Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees. A lifelong resident of Ontario, Canada, John has been composing since the age of 10, after being intrigued by the 'weird black notes' in a score sample of The Rite of Spring. The music of Igor Stravinsky (and other modernists) continues to inspire him. John is currently working on a series of orchestral portraits depicting the characteristics of specific animals. This suite, called Zoomorphisms, is loosely a modern-day update of Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals. He would like to move more into film and concert music arenas in the future.
About His Composition
The inspiration for Festive Overture came after John listened to some mid-career Stravinsky works. This short symphonic overture has a fast, rhythmically propulsive 'A' section, a contrasting meditative 'B' section, and a recapitulation with some extensions. John says that one goal he had in composing the overture was to write a fanfare type of piece that had a "celebratory feel without the bombast."
About NOTION, in His Words
I use computer software for composition, performance, and playback. (I don't usually have an orchestra waiting to play my music!) I began using NOTION back in 2005 and have used it exclusively ever since. Part of the inspiration for Festive Overture was to experiment how well NOTION could handle short marcato attacks and articulations, prominently appearing throughout the score.
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FINALIST: YOUNG COMPOSERS |
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Matt Webster
Canberra, A.C.T., Australia |
Give a listen to Matt's composition: March of the Ants
Young Finalist - Matt Webster
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Matt, all of 16 years of age at the time the Realize Music Challenge started, has been playing piano since he could remember and took up cello a year ago. His favorite classical composer is Tchaikovsky ("His music is simply the best!") and finds inspiration in the soundtrack work by Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams. In fact, he was first inspired to try out orchestral composing after hearing Zimmer's film score to The Da Vinci Code. In the future, he hopes to play cello in the London Symphony Orchestra and compose blockbuster film scores.
About His Composition
His March of the Ants was originally a whole lot shorter, written for a friend's birthday. When he decided to enter the piece in the Realize Music Challenge, Matt revamped it to a much larger scale and tried, as he put it, to make it "more film-esque."
About NOTION, in His Words
NOTION definitely helps me with writing, due to its simplicity with input and the ability to just press play and hear good-quality samples. I love it. I find it so much easier to compose when I'm not dealing with horrible MIDI sounds.
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RUNNER-UP WINNERS |
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The following nine runner-up winners came out ahead of all other composers in the three contestant categories.
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LOOKING AHEAD |
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You could be a winner in the third annual competition. Keep an eye on the Contest area of www.notionmusic.com and in NOTION Music's VIBRATO newsletter for announcements about the Challenge for 2009-2010.
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