Iron Composer is an instant composition contest.
Five composers are invited to compete in person. On the morning of the event, the finalists are assigned an instrumentation and a secret musical ingredient. They have just five hours to write a piece of music that incorporates those two elements. Their work is then performed and judged on a public concert that same evening.
ANALOG arts established Iron Composer in 2007. In 2009, they relocated the contest from Omaha to Cleveland, where it has been hosted by Baldwin-Wallace College ever since. WCLV 104.9 FM broadcasts live every competition.
The original idea for Iron Composer came from Lucky Mosko’s composition workshops at CalArts where composers were just as likely to get a bag of carrots as a secret musical ingredient as they were a motif.
PRIZES
1st Prize, $1,000+
2nd Prize, $350
3rd Prize, $300
4th Prize, $250
5th Prize, $200
* The purse consists of a $500 cash prize and a $500 commission for a new work to be performed by Blue Water Chamber Orchestra on their 2014-2015 season.
FINALISTS
Jason Buchanan (San Mateo, CA) is a Ph.D. candidate at the Eastman School of Music and was selected as Artist in Residence, Bergen (Norway) by USF Verftet and the City Council of Bergen. He is the founder of Melos Music and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg (Germany). [www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com]
Michelle McQuade Dewhirst (Green Bay, WI) serves as Associate Professor of Music at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She is an active horn player and a founder of a very small consortium, an ensemble devoted to music that lasts one minute or less or that consist of one hundred or fewer notes. Her music has been performed by St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Pacifica String Quartet, and eighth blackbird. [www.michellemcquadedewhirst.com]
Charles Mason (Coral Gables, FL) is a professor of composition and chair of the composition department at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. He has been awarded the Rome Prize, the National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Award, the American Composer Orchestra’s “Playing It Unsafe” award, and the Delius Prize. His work has been commissioned by American Composers Orchestra, Ritz Chamber Players, DUO 46, and the Miami String Quartet. His music is featured on releases by Innova Recordings, Quindecim Recordings, and Capstone Recordings. [www.charlesnormanmason.com]
Gene Pritsker (New York, NY) is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation; an eclectic hip hop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc. ensemble who have released cd’s on Col-legno, Composers Concordance and Innova Records. His music has been performed by Adelaide Symphony, Brooklyn, Shanghai and Berlin Philharmonic, as well as Anne Akiko Meyers, and Simone Dinnerstein. His film credits include orchestration for Cloud Atlas. [www.genepritsker.com]
NEW IN 2014
Iron Composer will be presented as part of Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival. The main campus of the festival is on the Lake Erie waterfront near the Great Lakes Science Center. Baldwin Wallace Conservatory will continue to host Iron Composer’s Opening Ceremony and Writing Period, while the evening concert and radio broadcast will be held downtown at the Great Lakes Science Center.