LOS ANGELES (CLEAR NOTE PUBLICATIONS) - Deliberations are complete and the jury has announced the winners of the eighth international composition competition that is held biannually in Corfu, Greece. This years winning compositions are: First-place "Fleur" by Margriet Verbeek, Second-place "Mississippi Revisited" by Mark Small, and Third-place "Suite Miniatura" by Antonio Grande. With Honorary awards presented for: "Impromptu" by Nicos Troullos and "A Vortex of Urgent Winds" by Greg Steinke.
Over 30 works were submitted this year from around the globe. All of them written specifically for the competition. The submission requirements were that the pieces be educational compositions of medium difficulty for emerging guitarists. The quality of all the submitted works was extremely high making the judging quite challenging. The jury for this event consisted of: Dr. Beth Denisch/Berklee College of Music, Dr. Anthony Paul De Ritis/Northeastern University, Dr. Michalis Economou/ Elliniko Metsovio Polytexneio, DMA Boston University, Mr. Leonidas Kanaris/ Chairman of the Corfu Festival, and Dr. Apostolos Paraskevas/Berklee College of Music.
This event, which focuses on the music of our time, also sponsors concerts, master classes, discussion groups and performance competitions. The visiting concert artists for this year were Dale Kavanagh, Michael Chapdelaine, Apostolos Paraskevas and Adam Holzman. All performances were held in the newly built recital hall situated in the old fortress of Corfu.
The mission of this international Festival is to increase the 21st century guitar repertoire, ensuring that an ample number of new works will continue to be available to emerging players and students of the guitar. With the composition competition in particular the organizers actively encourage composers of all ages to create new works for guitar that then receive recognition through publication and distribution. The Festival also offers performance opportunities and assists the careers of young players and composers through its concert program. The event is also a forum for those who are interested in current information and methodology pertaining to guitar pedagogy.
This event and others like it help to propel the guitar into the twenty-first century by eliciting a high level of interest in music for guitar and, at the same time making this unique instrument more accessible to performers, composers and audiences everywhere.
Sponsors for this years competition were: The D' Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts, The Embassy of the United States in Athens, Berklee College of Music and Clear Note Publications.
Publication of the winning entries is underway and the winning entries will be available within the coming month. All three pieces will be published as printed sheet music and digital editions to be made available worldwide from the Clear Note web site at https://www.clearnote.net.
Classical guitarists and their audiences everywhere benefit from events of this kind, because they draw on the talents of composers from around the world. All of us can now look forward to hearing the works that the 8th International Composition Competition has brought to life.
