The Penn State International Call for Scores is a biennial call. This call alternates with the International New-Music Festival and Symposium, with the Call for Scores occurring in even spring years and the Festival occurring in odd spring years. This call has two categories: acoustic composition and electronic music
Submissions are now closed for the 2024 International Call for Scores.
View Press Release for 2024 HERE.
THE PENN STATE SCHOOL OF MUSIC ANNOUNCES WINNING WORKS OF THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SCORES
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (USA) – The Penn State School of Music, Living Music, and Composition Program have named Sami Seif and Berk Yağlı the winners of the 2024 International Call for Scores. The selected works will be presented on the Penn State Living Music Concert on March 14, 2024. The concert will take place at 7:30pm in the Penn State School of Music Recital Hall and is free and open to the public. The Penn State School of Music announced their call for scores in August 2023 and received 280 submissions from composers around the world. The call for scores was open to composers of all ages and all career stages, with the categories of acoustic chamber music and electronic music. Through a blind judging process, panel members selected one winning work in each category. This year’s call marks the 3rd biennial Penn State International Call for Scores. The Penn State International Call for Scores alternates years with the Penn State International New-Music Festival & Symposium.
Acoustic Winner: Sami Seif
Composition: Syriac Fugato 2 (two violas)
Lebanese composer and music theorist Sami Seif (b. 1998) has been praised as “a distinctive compositional voice” who creates “intoxicating and fascinating soundworld[s]”. Described as “very tasteful and flavorful” with “beautiful, sensitive writing!”, his music is inspired by the aesthetics, philosophies, paradigms, and poetry of his Middle-Eastern heritage. His latest musical concerns center around the phenomenology of time and of differing degrees of focus.
Originally from the small town of Ashkout in Mount Lebanon, he was born to a non-musical family in Abu Dhabi and he is fluent in Arabic, French and English. He started out at the age of twelve as a self-taught musician, composing and playing on microtonal keyboards. Not having had access to formal music education, Seif taught himself how to read and write music by reading theory textbooks. He later formally studied piano, composition, audio engineering, and sound synthesis.
Seif studied composition and music theory at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where, he was honored with the Donald Erb prize in composition and the Beth Pearce Nelson award in music theory upon graduation. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, studying with Jason Eckardt, David Schober, Bruce Saylor, and Robert Dick.
Electronic Winner: Berk Yağlı
composition: Hypnagogic Hallucination Machinery (fixed media playback)
Berk Yağlı (born 1999) is a Cypriot guitarist, composer, and producer. His mission with his music has been to talk about social, political, and philosophical matters interestingly to invite the listeners into reflecting on the topics. He has been active in the UK since 2017. He studied Music and Sound Technology (University of Portsmouth), Masters in Composition (University of Sheffield), and currently at the University of the Arts London working under Adam Stanovic for his Ph.D. topic hybridity between metal and electroacoustic music. His works have been presented internationally including Argentina (Salta), UK (Leicester, Plymouth, Sheffield, London, Staffordshire), US (New York City, Indianapolis, Georgia, Utah, Kansas City, Missouri), Taiwan (Taipei), South Korea (Seoul, Daegu), Poland (Krakow), Switzerland (Zurich), Ireland (Limerick), Italy (Padova), Mexico (Morelia), Austria (Linz), Australia (Sydney), China (Shenzhen) and more. He is regularly invited to compose in studios including VICC (Visby, Sweden), CMMAS (Morelia, Mexico), Studio Kura (Fukuoka, Japan), and ACA-Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida, USA). He recently won the 2022 18th WOCMAT Phil Winsor International Youth Computer Music Competition Award.
Previous Winners:
2022 Winners
Stephen Ryan Jackson (acoustic), Tooth Necklace
Masafumi Oda (electronic), Radical Duality IV
2020 Winners
Gilad Cohen (acoustic), Firefly Elegy
Christopher LaRosa (electronic), on revient toujours