Details of the 2024 NCEM Young Composers Award will be announced on Sunday 26 November.
Winner
19 to 25 years
Owen Spafford
with Bog Bodies
Winner
18 years & under
Jacob Jordan
with A Ceremonial Dance for Mice
The winning pieces will be premiered by the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble in a public concert at The Stoller Hall, Manchester on 9 November. The performance will be recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show on Sunday 26 November.
The shortlisted pieces were:
19–25 years
Mollie Carlyle
Not Quite Music To Dance To
Sam Meredith
Ayo Visto lo Mappamundi
Owen Spafford
Bog Bodies
Rachel Sunter
Nada que perder
18 years and under
Tommaso Bailo
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Edwin De Nicolò
Alemada and Toccata
Jacob Jordan
A Ceremonial Dance For Mice
Reese Carly Manglicmot
FLY!
The Award was judged at the National Centre for Early Music on 12 May when the shortlisted pieces were performed by The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble (ECSE). The judges were ECSE; Les Pratt, Producer BBC Radio 3; Delma Tomlin, Director of the National Centre for Early Music. The performance was filmed and is available to watch via the link at the top of the page. Earlier in the day the shortlisted pieces were presented by ECSE in a workshop with the young composers led by composer Liz Dilnot Johnson.
For the 2023 award the National Centre for Early Music and BBC Radio 3 invited aspiring young composers to write a new piece for the acclaimed virtuoso period instrument group, The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble.
The Award is annual, and is open to young composers resident in the UK up to the age of 25. It is judged in two age categories: 18 and under, and 19–25.
This year composers were invited to base their work on a popular tune from the Spanish 'Golden Age' of the 16th and 17th centuries and to create a new piece in the same spirit, using the melody as a starting point for their own musical ideas.
The annual NCEM Young Composers Award was launched in 2008 and is the only such scheme in the UK. It offers a unique opportunity for young composers to engage with the instruments and performance styles of early music, and to work with leading professional early musicians. In bridging the worlds of ‘early’ and ‘new’ music, the Award complements the NCEM’s education policy, to support and nurture young composers and demonstrate to all participants that the music of previous centuries is relevant to today’s creative endeavours.
