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.
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.