BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick welcomes guests to the 2023 BMI Composer Awards celebration at Chelsea Table and Stage in New York City

2023 BMI Composer Award Winners Announced

BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and BMI Foundation, Inc. celebrated the honorees of the 71st annual BMI Composer Awards at a private ceremony held on May 15 at Chelsea Table and Stage in New York City

Written By

Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and BMI Foundation, Inc. celebrated the honorees of the 71st annual BMI Composer Awards at a private ceremony held on May 15 at Chelsea Table and Stage in New York City. BMI Foundation President and BMI Executive Director of Classical Deirdre Chadwick, composer and chair Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and BMI Senior Vice President of Licensing David Levin presented the awards to six emerging composers for excellence in composition as well as one honorable mention.

The BMI Composer Awards recognize superior ability in music composition by composers aged 27 or younger with annual awards totaling $20,000. As David Levin acknowledged in his remarks, this year over 500 applications were submitted to the competition from young composers around the world. As in all previous years, all works were judged anonymously by two panels of judges who are all BMI-affiliate composers. This year’s preliminary judges were David Schober, Alyssa Weinberg, and Trevor Weston. The final judges were George Lewis, Kevin Puts, and Elena Ruehr. BMI, in collaboration with the BMI Foundation, has awarded over 600 grants to young composers throughout the history of the competition.

As BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick explained in her opening remarks, as part of BMI’s ongoing efforts to make these accolades more inclusive, there is no longer a requirement for applicants to be currently studying composition formally and, as a result, the word “student” has been removed from the name of these awards. In addition, one of the two special prizes given to the honorees, a prize for the composer of the work deemed by the judges to be the most outstanding in the competition, has been renamed in honor of BMI Composer Awards Chair Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. This award was formerly named in honor of the founder of these awards, William Schuman, after his death in 1992 and awards in his name were given for 30 years. It is a particularly rare honor for an award to be named after someone who is still very much with us and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s joy and honor in following William Schuman, a composer she greatly admires, was palpable. The special award for the youngest winner of the competition continues to be named after Carlos Surinach (1915-1997). Maxwell Lu, aged 21, received both the Carlos Surinach Award and the inaugural Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Award.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich announcing the recipients of the 2023 BMI Composer Awards

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich announcing the recipients of the 2023 BMI Composer Awards

The 2023 BMI Composer Award winners and their award-winning works are as follows:

Christian-Frédéric Bloquert (b. 1997): Métropole for orchestra

Christopher John Michael Enloe (b. 1997): Frika for orchestra

Seare Ahmad Farhat (b. 1996): …ka spoojmsi shwa poh hāla ke… (Like the halo around the moon) for string quartet

Natasha Frank (b. 1998): Riven for Cello and electronics

Maxwell Lu (b. 2002): arboreal for orchestra

Sofia Jen Ouyang (b. 2001): As if sharing a joke with nothingness for Orchestra

In addition, an Honorable Mention citation was given to 16-year-old Charlie Zhong for his composition Illusions of Tranquility for orchestra

Before the awards were announced, flutist Julianna Eidle performed Sadie’s Story for multiple flutes (alto flute, flute, and piccolo) and fixed media, a 2022 BMI Composer Award winning work by Ábel M.G.E.. The piece incorporates recordings of Eidle’s Eastern European Jewish family who fled persecution in Ukraine in 1920 and emigrated to the USA.

You can read more about the 2023 BMI Composer Award-winning compositions here.

A group photo of the 2023 BMI Composer Award winners (pictured left to right): Christian-Frédéric Bloquert; Natasha Frank; Seare Ahmad Farhat; Chair of the Composer Awards Ellen Taaffe Zwilich; Christopher John Michael Enloe; and Maxwell Lu. (Sofia Jen Ouyang, who was unable to attend the ceremony, is not pictured.) Photo courtesy BMI