Call for scores: Best Symphonina of the Year Competition

Interested composers should submit their scores in MP3 format to David Fogel at david.fogel@symphonina.org before 1 December.

Only one submission for consideration may be offered by a composer. The winner will receive a $2 000 prize, while the second-placed composer will receive a $1 000 prize.

Contestants must read the full rules below:

The 2023 Best Symphonina of the Year Prize (“The Symphonina Prize”), established by The Symphonina Foundation, seeks to recognise outstanding original Symphonina compositions from the year 2023.

To be considered for recognition, a submission must:

• Be completely original to the composer or composers, with the composer(s) having full rights to the composition and with all composers who contributed to the composition identified in order of contribution, and all persons contributing to sound engineering or other aspects of production also identified.
• Be submitted to David Fogel at david.fogel@symphonina.org with a subject line of ‘Symphonina Prize Entry’ before 11.59pm Pacific Time on 1 December.
• Be in MP3 format (320kbps).
• Conform to the guidelines of what constitutes a Symphonina.

Composers are encouraged to follow this link to review ‘What is a Symphonina?’ and to listen to the 10 examples that David Fogel has created, which are linked from The Symphonina Foundation’s web pages, as well as the five Symphoninas that were given awards or recognitions from the 2022 contest.

Submissions that do not conform to the main aspects of lasting about 10 minutes, and never more than 12 minutes, having multiple distinct movements (three or four movements), and being tonal with melodic themes, may be rejected without further review.

Judging for the Symphonina Prize will be done by the directors, officers and advisors to The Symphonina Foundation or their delegates. No directors, officers, advisors or anyone who otherwise serves as a judge for the competition may enter the competition as a composer. Any person who assisted on a specific submission (for example, on sound engineering) will be asked to recuse himself or herself and pass on judging that submission.

Judging will be based on the subjective opinions of the judges in terms of the quality of composition and production, as well as confirmation to the format of a Symphonina. Composers who have an accompanying score for their work may submit the score in PDF format at the same time as they submit the MP3 and must remove any reference to their name from the score. The supporting score may be used to assess the quality of composition. The judges will assess each composition “blind” with the composer’s name(s) removed.

Contributions to the contest will be assessed and scored by the preliminary judges and Fogel, as well as potentially additional judges will make a final determination as to the winner and first-runner up from among all entries that the judges identify for recognition with distinction. All of the decisions by the judges are final. The judges retain the right to make no recommendation for an award (first place, second place, or recognition with distinction) should no such entry be judged suitable.

The Symphonina Foundation will endeavour to recognise and promote all submissions that the judges deem suitable for recognition. Please email any questions regarding the contest to David Fogel at david.fogel@symphonina.org.

View the original call here.