| New York City, NY – Chamber music ensemble SHUFFLE Concert today announces the winners of the group’s first Composition Competition. Open to national and international composers ages 18 and up, the competition comprises two categories for works of 5 to 7 minutes in length: Original Compositions and Arrangements. Works could be submitted for any possible combination of at least 4 of the 6 instruments comprising the ensemble: clarinet, oboe, violin, cello, piano and soprano.
First Prize in the Originals Category was awarded to composer Piotr Szewczyk (pronounced pyo-ter schef-chick) for Twisted Dances, for oboe quartet.
Second Prize in the Originals Category was awarded Kevin Wilt for Elemental Dances, for oboe quartet.
In the Arrangements Category, First prize was awarded to Oran Eldor for his arrangement of Brazilian singer/songwriter Adoniran Barbosa’s Trem Das Onze, a samba composition released in 1964 and one of the most popular Brazilian songs.
All three winning pieces will be featured on the SHUFFLE menu on its 2015-16 season. First Prize winners also receive a purse of $1,000, and Second Prize a purse of $750. A total of 125 submissions were received.
“SHUFFLE Concert is thrilled with the terrific response we received to our first competition,” stated Eliran Avni, SHUFFLE’s creative director. We congratulate the winners and thank not only them, but all who submitted works. To receive 125 submissions for our first Composers Competition is exciting! We look forward to premiering the winning pieces in 2015.”
No stranger to new works, SHUFFLE Concert has already commissioned more than 20 arrangements as well as two new works by composers Avner Dorman and Jonathan Keren.
The New York-based ensemble, which has built a reputation in the classical music world for its creative programming, juxtaposes works not only from different classical music eras but also from jazz, pop and Broadway. The ensemble’s non- traditional instrument grouping (clarinet, oboe, violin, cello, piano and voice) allows for a wide variety of works, which range from solos to sextets. SHUFFLE can next be heard in New York City on January 12, 2015 at the APAP YPCA Showcase at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall.
About the Composers
Piotr Szewczyk, a Polish-born violinist and composer who became a naturalized U.S. Citizen in 2014, has been a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 2007. Mr. Szewczyk held the position of Composer-In-Residence at the Florida Chamber Music Project for the 2013-2014 season. He holds the B.M. and double M.M. degrees in violin and composition from the University of Cincinnati College – Conservatory of Music, where he studied violin with Piotr Milewski and Kurt Sassmannshaus and compositions with Darrel Handel, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Michael Fiday, Henry Gwiazda and Joel Hoffman. Before joining JSO, Mr. Szewczyk completed a three-year fellowship at the New World Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas where he served as a rotating concertmaster. As a composer, Mr. Szewczyk has received numerous awards including those from American Modern Ensemble, The American Prize, Rapido! Composition Contest by Atlanta Chamber Players, Third Millennium Ensemble, American Composers Forum, Society of Composers, Jacksonville Symphony Fresh Ink, VoxNovus 60×60 Project, Fauxharmonic Adagio Contest, UPBEAT Hvar – Croatia, ACCENT Competition at Music X Festival and others. Mr. Szewczyk is the winner of the Theme Song Contest for north Florida NPR station WJCT and his composition begins and ends each First Coast Connect show with Melissa Ross.
Kevin Wilt, Assistant Professor and Composer-in-Residence at Florida Atlantic Univiersity’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from Michigan State University, where he studied with Ricardo Lorenz. He completed his Masters Degree in Music Composition at MSU, working with Jere Hutcheson and Charles Ruggiero, and his Bachelors Degree in Music Composition and Theory from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where he studied with James Hartway. His works are exclusively published by the Whistling Vine Publishing Company. Wilt was recently awarded a grant by the Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association to create a new multi-movement work for large wind ensemble. In January 2010, Maestro Leonard Slatkin led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a reading of the orchestra version of Wilt’s Song of the Phoenix at Orchestra Hall in Detroit. Recent projects include The Wars of Other Men, featuring a score conducted by Wilt, recorded at Aashrum Studios in Metro Detroit. In 2011, Wilt recorded a score composed for string quartet for the short film Renegade, produced by Riot Enterprises, Jonathan West, director. In 2009, his music was recorded by members of the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as part of the NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop.
Oran Eldor education credits include being graduate of Berklee College of Music; a composition fellow at the Royal Opera House, London, and a BMI musical theater writing workshop member. He has served as composer in residence with the Salome Chamber Orchestra. His work has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, on and off Broadway, at the MET museum, PBS Great Performances, at the Hollywood Bowl with Los Angeles Philharmonic, in London at the Royal Opera House, in France with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, at Schloss Elmau’s prestigious music series in Germany, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and other venues in Germany, Korea, Israel, Canada, Mexico, Australia and the across the US. Currently the composer of Sesame Street (Israel), Eldor has arranged concerts for such legendary performers as John Legend, Kristin Chenoweth, Hugh Jackman, Deborah Voigt, Lea Michele and many more, as well as Julie Andrews’ “Mousical”. He has won several awards, including the Rokem Composition Award and the Esterhazy Quartet Composition Award.
About SHUFFLE Concert
SHUFFLE Concert celebrates its fifth anniversary this 2014-15 season. An inspiring and energetic chamber music ensemble, SHUFFLE Concert changes the rules of performance as we know it. At each performance, the audience is invited to actively participate in the selection of works to be performed. Randomly selected audience members choose the works that will be played from a menu of over 30 works and 15 different styles, with works ranging from solos and duos, to trios, quartets, quintets and sextets. Genres vary from classical, baroque, and romantic, to Jazz, pop and Broadway. The result is a unique performance.
SHUFFLE’s members are exceptionally accomplished chamber musicians and are graduates of such renowned music schools as Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Oberlin, Mannes and Bard College Conservatory. They have all individually won numerous prizes, and have performed extensively as soloists and collaborative musicians throughout the world.
Since its inception, SHUFFLE Concert has performed in a variety of concert settings throughout its home base in New York City, including the Duplex in the West Village, the Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall (which was broadcast on WWFM and WQXR), and The Greene Space. The ensemble has performed across the country, from Long Island to Gettysburg to Los Angeles, and across Israel. SHUFFLE released its first CD in October 2103.
For further details about SHUFFLE, including individual artist member biographies, please visit www.shuffleconcert.com/
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