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My first concerto and one of my first orchestral pieces. I've written it in about 2 months, in a hurry to finish before my 16th birthday. The concerto is in romantic style and B flat major. It has four movements: I. Allegro moderato - sonata form, orchestra: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (There is a cadenza before the coda for the soloist to write) II. Largo - ternary form, addition of english horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, +2 horns, 2 tenor trombones, 1 bass trombone and 1 tuba, harp, bass drum, triangle, cymbal. (In G minor) III. Scherzo - ternary form, 3/4 time, addition of the piccolo. Intended to sound like a Brazilian choro. (In F major) IV. Finale - rondo form, 12/8 time, addition of snare drum. I'm having some trouble achieving a greater visibility for my work. If anyone knows about competitions or something similar that would accept this style of composition I'd be very happy. As always, any feedback is appreciated!

Howdy howdy, While I was at the Imani Winds Festival, all composers were given a reading session with Imani Winds. I wrote a piece for sax quartet for the festival, so I needed to write a new piece for Imani to read in this session. I got crazy writer's block and had no idea what to write at all for the 3 weeks leading up to it. It took until I heard Imani Winds play a few concerts in person to realize I could really go all out and decide I was just going to use this reading to write some crazy sampler (rather than try and make it a full-fledged work that they could sightread and give a good recording of). So, I wrote this thing in 2 days. It is very unpolished and everything could be fleshed out and have better transitions. However, I am really happy I chose to make it this way because I got some crazy ideas onto the paper with cracked musicians to play it all. Now I have something I can use in proposals to show my composing when I do not have to consider playability into the mix. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy this cool little thing.

I just tell you that it is very well balanced, that it has interesting harmonic twists and that I like it a lot.

Hey @olivercomposer, I love the icy cold G minor here at the beginning with the piccolo. With the percussion starting in the 1:34 section it fits well to a movie trailer on science fiction film when the astronauts are discovering the new planet for me. In 2:40 I think your usage of brass is more controlled here, which I love. Again, modulating to octatonic E minor last section starting in 2:49 is very Hollywood for me. Thx for sharing! Henry

Hi @Zeldz, I like you are using the dark key of G# minor here for the dark piano ballad. But maybe for me it's too beautiful to be the intro of a battle. Unless you are using a horn for the slow version of this and then use trumpets for the real battle music, idk. Henry

Hi all, Evan here with my piece of the summer. I got to attend the Imani Winds festival in NYC (at Juilliard!!!) last week. Was amazing and awesome. I had to write a piece for it and got to write for the one odd group out - the sax quartet. I wanted to write something that matched the energy of getting a premiere at Juilliard, something that would be great for the 2nd group premiering it (my amazing friends at Memphis), and I also wanted to push my style the furthest I could. All of my music for awhile now has been some variation of the style I built from my minimalist orchestral work, but it was time I forced myself to try something different. For this work, I tried really hard to do the opposite of every normal decision I would normally make when writing. This was extremely hard to write and I did not have a direction until the last week of writing. Eventually, this piece fell into the idea of just being weird. It was bizarre! I did not even like listening to it at the time. But, as I leaned into writing weird, it really became something I was proud of. I listened to every single saxophone quartet I could find on the internet to influence this work. I wanted to create something worthy of the repertoire, and while I am not able to say if it is or not, I gave it my all. I certainly think it is a unique piece, and I hope you enjoy some of the musical soundscapes I wrote down. Thank you for listening.

OMG, Whitacre seems easy when you listen to his music, but all those dissonances... And there is no excess in this piece.

Hi Henry, Deeply appreciate your listen and in depth comment. I am surprised you still hear a lot of me in this! But, of course you do - this is still my musical message. The minimalism was something I tried to do away with for a majority of the piece, though. I only brought it back for the last movement because I found a way to still challenge my normal way of writing with all of the microtones / bizarre outbursts throughout. This is, in my opinion, my most mature work so far? I think, outside of the 1st movement (which may be revised to match the quality of the other 3), I really took time to try and not cut corners with this piece. The neck only saxophones in the opening turned out a LOT better than I thought. Genuinely had no idea how it would sound, but it fit. Especially that gnarly soprano growl closing the movement. What were your thoughts on the vocal / aleatoric sections? This was maybe the first time I implemented something I wrote on paper into my music and was kind of a disconnected idea that I wrote down for score beauty + the idea of creating an ethereal sound moreso. My teacher and I fought about the 3rd movement for awhile! I almost made it all aleatoric again saying "just go nuts," but my teacher convinced me to write it all out. I was really struggling to write out rhythms and notes that were as crazy sounding as I wanted. I used a joke piece, "The World's Most Unwanted Music," to steal the idea of a "slam" (everyone playing crazy and all at once) at first, but my teacher said to just write something out. I opted for what is in the score, and it really did turn out like the chaos I wanted!!! I kept telling the performers the 4th movement's opening reminded me of Hereditary. Something about it is sad / reminiscent. This is my favorite movement for its emotional factor. I think it could have the same effect on a listener if something the dynamic direction was played with more confidence, which I hope to have in the second performance. I loved it here, but I think the 4th movement suffered the most because there are really important big moments that were just never played with confidence. I was not playing, no. His name is Ron. We hung out a lot and he is like a frat boy who decided to become a musician. Funny energy. I appreciate your support of my music and pursuits. Thanks for your emails and comments 🙂

Vote for your favorite "Lucid Dreamer", "Peaceful Sleeper" and "Biggest Nightmare" in this poll! The winners will receive special badges! The voter names are not public - so of course, as always you are free to vote for yourself. There will be no popular vote for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place as the judges have decided that that has been a bit redundant in the past. A lucid dreamer is of course someone who shows quite a bit of awareness and agency in their dream and has composed music to suit this particular kind of dream. A peaceful sleeper is pretty self-explanatory and someone who has composed music that is soothing and almost like a lullaby could be deserving of such an award. Biggest nightmare is also self-explanatory, as some of the submissions exhibit anything but a soothing or idyllic dream experience. To listen to the submissions go here: For the competition announcement and rules go here:

Entry L - "cathédrale électronique" by @Paweł Siek (for flute [with glissando headjoint and circular breathing] and piano [with e-bows]) "cathédrale électronique" refers to aesthetics undergoing algorithmic transformations. The piece is a study of a slow, lulling and dangerously beautiful "immersion" in the sound world "without breaths". Thus, it refers to the state of sleep, immersion in a different reality, in which "other breaths" determine the course of time and shape an imaginary space - in this case, an underwater, sunken cathedral. During sleep, the rate of breathing follows your imagination. It also happens that breathing stops - in sleep apnea. The starting point are the harmonies present in "Jeux d'eau" by M. Ravel and "La Cathédrale engloutie" by C. Debussy, processed algorithmically in a program written for the needs of the piece - in order to generate qualitatively new, water-dream harmonies. Wide-range glissandi, possible to achieve thanks to the use of the glissando head, harmonize with the idea of using permanent breath in the piece. The piano part is mostly based on extended and stable "sound planes". On this instrument, one of the few ways to extract them, while creating further opportunities for modeling continuous sound, is to use e-bows placed on the strings.

Entry C - "The Journey of Jason" by @Michalis (for Violin and Piano) The piece is inspired by the myth of Jason, which is an archetypal "dreamy" myth of a quest. Jason was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece featured in Greek literature.

Entry B - "a knee in the grass through my eyelashes" by @GreenGiantCanOfCorn (for Soprano and Piano) This piece was constructed around the accompanying poem. The poem depicts the listener (you), entrenched in a dream. The narrator (again, you, the listener) is stratified between three levels: the needer, the object of your own desire, and the observer of the entire scenario. Within the text, these three cognitive levels are distinguished by italicization and paragraph alignment. In this way, the text is able to detail a complex dreamscape of self-doubt and need through its use of form, without imposing a specific narrative or temporality. To detail the compositional aspects of this piece, the musical form serves to highlight the dreamlike non-linearity of thought and memory. It's not that this piece is formless; rather, it is incredibly aware of form, employing it as a cognitive guide. Section boundaries are often blurred with either extremely unpredictable or extremely familiar materials. Even silence is used, stored, and recalled as a familiar material. The form is real because the listener needs it to be. Therefore, it is indistinct and varied in its macro shape, and confident and intense in its phrase- and section-level materials. The piece also uses technology: two E-bows on the piano, with sustain and sostenuto pedals to allow infinite oscillation. Additionally, the soprano sings into the piano to sympathetically vibrate the piano's strings. Not that this needs stating, but stylistically, this isn't supposed to be a "pretty" piece just because it uses harmony. For better or worse, existing within the contemporary world means that listeners likely have instincts regarding functional harmony. This allows the piece to utilize such instincts to construct sectional contrasts between familiar and unfamiliar approaches to expectation and fulfillment. TLDR: on a structural level, this piece does not commit to any one method of utilizing harmony, and instead uses harmony as a concept to evade expectation. This is a needy piece, a "waking up sweating and the sweat feels cold, and you can't tell if it's in a good way" kind of piece. a knee in the grass through my eyelashes centers the contradictions and anxieties present within the unconscious mind as we define our own personal truths. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be considered for this competition. I would also add: