The Ballora-Wang Young Composer Prize is an annual prize which recognizes three composers at the high school level (9th-12th grade or equivalent) each year. The prize launched in fall 2019 and became the Ballora-Wang Young Composer Prize in fall 2021. The call typically opens in the fall of each year and closes in December with winners announced each spring.
Submissions to the 2025 Ballora-Wang Young Composer Award are now CLOSED!
Awards will be announced in spring 2025.
DEADLINE: December 7, 2024
Submissions for the 2026 award will open in July 2025.
2024 Announcement of Winners:
THE PENN STATE SCHOOL OF MUSIC ANNOUNCES WINNING WORKS OF THE 2024 BALLORA-WANG YOUNG COMPOSERS AWARD
The Penn State School of Music and Composition Program has named three winners and four finalists of the 2024 Young Composers Contest. The winners are Luke Baron (Ambler, PA), Hudson Fagan (Mesa, AZ), and Hannah Chen (Union City, CA). Each of the winning composers will receive a $100 prize and a one-hour composition lesson and career consultation with a Penn State composition faculty member.
The Penn State 2024 Ballora-Wang Young Composers Contest was announced in August 2023 and received 70 submissions from young composers around the United States. The contest was open to students at the high school level (9th-12th grade) or equivalent. This year marks the fifth annual Penn State young composers contest.
2024 Winners:
Luke Baron
Composition: because petals fall
Luke Christopher Baron, age 17, is a composer and pianist currently attending Juilliard Pre-college for composition. There he studies with Dr. Manuel Sosa and attends the Advanced Seminar for Musical Analysis. He also participates in the NY Youth Symphony Composition program through which he has had works read by the DeCoda and the Grammy-award-winning New York Youth Symphony orchestras, and performed by the NYYS Traumerei Clarinet quintet and organist Jae Lee. Luke attended the Young Artist Program for Composition at BU Tanglewood Institute in summer 2023. There he debuted and performed his Piano Quartet, “because petals fall” and had his orchestra piece “We Happy Few” read by the BUTI Orchestra. A winner of the 2022 Sound Symphony Concerto Competition he made his solo debut playing Mozart Concerto No. 13, for which wrote and performed original cadenzas. An avid collaborative pianist, Luke spent summers of 2021 and 2022 at Kinhaven Music School where he performed works spanning Quantz to Hindemith and debuted two original chamber works. In April, he was announced as a Springboard Grant Winner by the Bruce Montgomery Foundation for the Arts.
Hudson Fagan
Composition: desert storm
Hudson Fagan is a 17-year-old composer and violinist from Mesa, Arizona. He got his start arranging pieces for a violin duet of his friend and himself in 5th grade, and discovered his passion for composing as he tinkered with various software and explored different musical ideas. Hudson is most often inspired by the natural world and the works of Phillip Glass, R. Murray Schafer, and Maurice Ravel, and he hopes to pursue both Music Composition and Biology on a higher level in college.
Hannah Chen
Composition: flickers of light
Hannah Chen is a composer and harpist from the Bay Area. She attends SFCM Pre-College and is an alumna of Wildflower Composers, Boston University Tanglewood Institute and Luna Composition Lab. Hannah has received recognition from the Bay Area Creative Foundation, National YoungArts Foundation and more. Her works have been performed by Music at the Mission’s Chamberfest, Argus Quartet, she was a Featured Composer at the American Harp Society’s 2023 National Institute and was recently commissioned by EXTENSITY Concert Series. Hannah is the principal harpist of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra. She enjoys film/video game scoring and other multimedia projects.
2024 Finalists:
Harrison Chiang (Corona, CA), Composition: Prelude, Fugue, and Twists
Rhyuhn Green (Philadelphia, PA), Composition: Mørkt Sirkus
Hudson Holland (Cape Coral, FL), Composition: Forever in the Wind
James Liang (Austin, TX), Composition: The 9 Elves From The Planet Celarus
Tyler Shaver (Chicago, IL), Composition: 6 Static Scenes
Previous Winners:
2023 Winners:
Isaac Bolan (Kingson, PA)
Ravi Nguyen (Westford, MA)
Marvel Roth (Los Angeles, CA)
2022 Winners:
Zixuan Chen (Zhejiang, China)
Chris Dorner (Bentonville, AR)
Adah Kaplan (Dresher, PA)
2021 Winners:
Sointu Aalto (Edmonton, AB, Canada)
Luca Bardelle (Adria, Veneto, Italy)
Jackson Hunt (Monaca, PA)
2020 Winners:
Owen Johnson (Greensburg, PA)
Ash Paris-Carter (Winston-Salem, NC)
Rohan Srinivasan (Portland, OR)