So the Young Composers Challenge, created by Steve Goldman, is an annual contest and workshop, with $1000 cash prizes and performances of the winning pieces by the Orlando Philharmonic, plus a recording. Pretty amazing, but get this... it is 100% FREE!      

Having known nothing about this workshop/competition, even though this is the 7th year, it was a delight to be in attendance as I wasn't sure what to expect. I walked into a lecture hall filled with nearly a couple hundred students between the ages of 13 and 18. I could not help but have a smile on my face all day watching all of them so wrapped up in the idea of composing. Almost every one of the students had scores they are working on and all were conversing on ideas and techniques. Every single one of them, was so eager to learn, interact and pick the brains of the composer and musicians, I frankly was in awe. I couldn't help but think how cool that would have been when I was that age. Heck, I didn't even learn to read music until I was 15, and these kids are attempting full orchestral scores at 13, while speaking directly with professional symphony musicians and composers! 

The competition breaks down into an 8 hour workshop, hosted by Goldman and others. From there, the students have the rest of the summer to write their pieces, either for full orchestra or chamber ensemble. The winners get selected and the concert of the works is held in October.

In the Workshop, there are four sessions. The first is about the Principles of Composition. It highlight's thematic development, melody, harmony, and rhythm. From there, they bring out two winners from last year's competition and allow them to field questions after listening to their winning piece, for just over an hour. After lunch, session two begins, and for the next 3 hours, members of the Orlando Philharmonic address the group and demonstrate their respective instruments, while again fielding questions. And yes, EVERY instrument in the orchestra is represented, from Bassoon and Piccolo to Violin and numerous percussion.

Session three is all about proper notation and scoring techniques as well as orchestration. This section had tremendous information and a slideshow presentation to visually complement everything, including audio excerpts. The beauty of this is that every resource presented in the lecture is available on the YCC website for reference! From here, we moved into the next evolution of composing. The world of MIDI and scoring software. You'd be shocked at how many of these kids had full mock ups on their laptops with them and complete printed scores. It was a "tip of the iceberg" discussion to expose them to it all, and even went online live to show the students and parents in attendance where to download demo versions or inexpensive alternatives if they were interested in using it for the competition.

Finally, at the conclusion of all of this, nearly 8 1/2 hours later, it was complete unless you had a score with you that you wanted one of the composers to critique with you. Would you believe that 80% of the students stayed for this!! Absolutely amazing!

Kudos to Steve Goldman and everyone else involved in this. i can't wait to be a bigger part of it next year. I invite everyone here to check out their website and spread the word about it. It would be great to see this go national.

Young Composers Challenge.com 

And for any of you composers out there looking for some good beginning orchestration reference, check out the tutorial section on their site. (I think the full interactivity of the tutorial page only runs on Explorer although you can still see and access all the info via other browsers.)

www.toddmichaelrichards.com