Irish composer Colin Mawby's choral work, Prayer of Forgiveness, for SATB choir published by Kevin Mayhew Ltd, has just been awarded Top Honors in the Mixed Chamber Chorus category of the Waging Peace Through Singing competition, Oregon, USA. Only eight Top Honors awards were made in this category out of some 700 entries overall.

The competition was organized by the Carlton Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace to encourage the creation and dissemination of an international repertoire of choral music on peace-related texts. Composers of all nationalities were invited to create choral music on the theme of 'waging peace'.

Altogether there were 700 entries for ten different categories from over thirty countries. At least one work from each category will receive a premiere performance and monetary award. The works selected in categories One and Two (the category of Mawby's award) will be premiered by the Oregon Repertory Singers (Gill Seeley, Director) at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium in July 2003. These composers will be invited to attend the premieres and give presentations about their music.