2024 West Cork Chamber Music Festival - Composition Competition for Young Composers

Deadline: 13 March 2024 23:45

Call for scores

String Quartet Composition Competition for Irish citizens/residents under 35

The winning works will be premiered at The West Cork Chamber Music Festival 28 June – 7 July 2024

The West Cork Chamber Music Young Composers’ Competition is now open for entries. We are delighted welcome for the first time to Bantry, Bushra El-Turk as this year’s adjudicator. We accept submissions from all Irish and Irish-resident composers under 35. Past judges of this competition include Donnacha Dennehy, Lera Auerbach, Brett Dean, Deirdre Gribbin and Andrea Tarrodi.

Past winners of the Competition include Seán Doherty (whose work ‘I am the World’ was commissioned by the European Federation for Choral Music), Solfa Carlile and Amanda Feery, (both winners of the Seán Ó Riada competition), Robert Coleman (NCH Jerome Hynes competition winner) and Finola Merivale (a Dean’s Fellow at Columbia University).
Congratulations again to the 2023 winners, Leah Mullen, Timothy Doyle and Murrough Connolly.

The work:

  • Scored for string quartet (2 violins, 1 viola and 1 cello). Works requiring other instruments, pre-recorded sounds or electronics are not eligible for consideration.
  • 5-8 minutes duration.
  • Has not been performed in concert prior to its performances at the 2024 West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

The competition will be judged anonymously and the international judge will select three winning scores on equal footing. Each of the three composers will receive:

  • €1,000 prize money.
  • 3 nights’ accommodation at the festival.
  • 2 public performances of their work by a conservatoire quartet at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. The second will be the official World Premiere played at the quartet’s Town Concert (a date in early July).
  • The first performance will be at a workshop attended by all three composers and the public. The composer will have a chance to discuss their work with the international adjudicator and the musicians. The assigned conservatoire quartets will perform the works as they are workshopped and experiment with compositional suggestions.
  • Each composer will have an opportunity to work with the performers prior to the work’s Town Concert performance.
  • Competition entry is free.


Entrants must be under the age of 35 on 1st January 2024.

For further details see attached PDF iconwestcorkchambermusicfestivalcomposition_competition_2024.pdf

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