John Corigliano is a Grammy, Academy, and Pulitzer Award winner whose works have been performed by some of the world's most visible orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians. He employs a wide variety of styles with works covering symphonies, concerti, chamber works, and the opera. He first came to prominence in 1964 when, at the age of 26, his Sonata for Violin and Piano won the chamber-music competition of the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in Italy.

Since then he has been prolific, writing for such prominent clients as the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Center, and the National Symphony Orchestra. His pioneering Messages for the Millennium composition represented the United States in an international series where leading composers in each of several nations articulated a vision for the next millennium.

Mr. Corigliano has received the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No. 1 and the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2. He also won double Grammy Awards in 1996, both for Best Performance and again for Best Contemporary Classical Composition of the Year. He gained wider popularity with his scores for theatrical films Altered States (1980), Revolution (1985), and Francois Girard's The Red Violin (1997), which earned him the Academy Award for that year's best Original Music Score.

Carter Burwell's stellar career includes over 65 theatrical film scores ranging from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Conspiracy Theory. But there's more to this Harvard College grad than Hollywood. His varied resume also includes stints as computer modeler, Chief Computer Scientist, and Director of Digital Sound Research. Aside from films, he has also created electronic music, animated shorts, and computer-animated television spots; played in a number of New York City bands; wrote music for dance and stage; and other creative work.

His feature film credits are too numerous to list here. A short list includes Fargo, O Brother: Where Art Thou?, A Knight's Tale, The Spanish Prisoner, Being John Malkovich, Raising Arizona, Psycho III, Three Kings, Hamlet, The Big Lebowski, Rob Roy, Adaptation, Intolerable Cruelty, The Rookie, It Could Happen to You, and Kinsey. Mr. Burwell's most recent work appears in the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men and Martin McDonagh's In Bruges.

Lawrence Dillion has produced an impressive body of work, from brief solo pieces to a full-length opera. Although he lost 50% of his hearing in a childhood illness, he began composing as soon as he started piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1985, he went on to become the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, before he joined the faculty.

Among Dr. Dillon's many achievements, his Amadeus ex machina represented America in celebrations of Mozart's 250th birthday in Salzburg, Vienna, and Graz, Austria in the spring of 2006. The piece has also been performed by the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, where Dillon was a guest of the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, and awarded a special commendation by the 2003 Masterprize panel in London. It was chosen as contemporary competition piece for the 2002 Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine, and has had many U.S. performances.

Dr. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance, and Dean of the School of Music.

Each judge receives a printed score and an audio file of the top submissions, for ranking. A composite ranking across all three judges determines the winners of the thirteen prizes in this year's competition.

The second-annual Realize Music Challenge is open to composers of all ages with no entrance fee (scan the full contest rules). Since you submit your five-to-ten minute orchestral composition in one of three categories, you compete against musical peers for Finalist and Runner-up Prizes. Do hurry: the contest ends May 31st at midnight (Eastern Time).