Come and hear some fantastic new pieces by school-aged students from all over the world aged 8-18 who are part of The Purcell School’s Online Composition Academy!
The will all present their works live on Youtube at 5 p.m. this evening, London UK GMT
Devon Packer – Canada
Amelia Wolf – UK
Zara Rizvi – Bahrain
David Ingham – UK
Falak Suteri – India
William Henderson – Antigua and Barbuda
James Brew – Australia
Tiara Oberoi – India
Chia Ren Cher – Singapore
Eleanor Inn Rei Shuen – Malaysia
The winners of the 2020 Commonwealth Composition Challenge were announced via an online Awards Ceremony yesterday at 7.00pm GMT.
Over 100 young people submitted pieces they had written, and this was shortlisted to 11 finalists. The range and quality of the submissions was outstanding. Listen to the shortlisted entries, and watch the awards ceremony on The Commonwealth Resounds YouTube channel.
Alison Cox, Founder and Director of The Commonwealth Resounds commented “There is so much musical talent in the Commonwealth. We were absolutely delighted by the quality of entries received.”
The three award winners are:
The Commonwealth Composition Challenge is a special project launched at the beginning of the lockdown in March/April 2020. The aim of the project is to offer online opportunities to school-aged musicians and composers all over the Commonwealth who have been stuck at home during the Covid 19 Pandemic.
Many young people around the world were unable to communicate effectively with their own schools during the lockdown, and so this project has provided, in the words of a parent, ‘a wonderful, unexpected lifeline for them to continue their music education’.
Young people were invited to compose and submit a piece of music which reflected in some way their own feelings and experiences during this unusual time. We received more than 70 entries from a wide range of different Commonwealth countries.
To help support inexperienced young people further, we organised a series of one-day training workshops called ‘Go Compose Online’, during which school-aged composers worked online for a day with professional tutors and instrumentalists, who helped them to write and record their pieces. To date, we have managed to fund seven Go Compose workshops for over 80 young composers, at the same time creating badly-needed employment for the professional musicians involved.
An Online Awards Ceremony will be on Friday 30 October 2.00pm BST hosted on The Commonwealth Resounds YouTube channel.
There are three awards:
The Audience Vote closes at 10pm BST on Monday 26 October 2020.
A message of support for our Commonwealth Composition Challenge from Layne Robinson, Head of Policy at the Commonwealth. Mr Robinson congratulates our brilliant Commonwealth Composition Challenge finalists and speaking about how music is a tool to empower, unite & engage young people.