Young composers shine at COMP festival

Creating Original Music Project (COMP), sponsored by the Siquefield Family Foundation, is open to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. After a call for original compostions went out, about 55 entries were received from all over Missouri. Those entries were, in turn, judged by MU professors and students in the School of Music. The winners of the contest were invited to Mizzou for a concert and a master class held April 14, 2007.

Students were judged in eight divisions: elementary song (vocal), elementary instrumental, middle school fine art, middle school popular, senior high popular, senior high other, senior high sacred and senior high fine art. Winning students received a plaque and a cash prize of $200 to $1,000 depending on age and the prize or division. The students' schools also won a cash prize of $500 to $1,000.

Lindsey Lang, BS Ed '06, a master's candidate specializing in conducting, acted as the project manager for the COMP festival. "It's amazing what these kids can do," she says. "An elementary student wrote a composition for a brass quartet, and the boy who composed it heard the musicians practicing his piece. He knocked on the door and asked to speak to them about it. That was very mature." Lang couldn't have imagined completing a whole composition for a quartet at such a young age as some of the competitors.

One of the goals of the program is to involve young students in music—possibly to strengthen an interest in music that might otherwise not come to fruition. Another goal is to foster relationships between schools in Missouri and the University.

Links:

School of Music
COMP