Application form has been removed, because application for Composition Prize is now closed. Thank you.

Payment of Application Fee

Please enter your application number and pay the application fee of $50. Your application number is on the email sent to you after you submit the application form.

Application #

Deadlines

Applications, proposals, and scores must arrive by 11:59pm EST June 10^th, 2018
(Results of chosen scores and proposals notified by June 30^th, 2018 via email)
New works by the chosen composers must be submitted by 11:59pm EST October 5^th, 2018

Prizes

$3000 in total

1. $2000 + a premier of your work in NYC
2. $1000 + a premier of your work in NYC

(Travel stipend of up to $300/person (within North America); $600/person (outside North America) and overnight hotel in NYC covered)

Prize Winners Concert

December 16^th, 2018 (Merkin Hall, NYC)

Application Procedure

1. Complete the Application Form
   
   
2. Pay the application fee of $50 (PayPal link under application form)
   
   
3. Email biography, profile picture and a copy of your passport
   
   
4. One letter of recommendation by a musician related to composition or new music, emailed directly to application@andrewparkfoundation.org with the title stating your name
   
   
5. Email PDF files of score(s) of one or two solo or chamber works that best represent you as a composer
   
   
6. Audio/video links to your work(s) recommended but not required (through application form)
   
   
7. Email a proposal (English strongly recommended; around 750 words) for a work to be premiered by the Andrew Park Foundation concert. The piece should be a new work, written for 3 to 5 (Western, standard) instruments with optional voice. The theme of the prize is music inspired by Korean poetry selected by the committee. The proposal must include aspects of Korean humanities (philosophy, politics, history, music, poetry, art, etc) that interest you or that you might want to incorporate in your music, and how they might relate to your own experiences and culture.
   
   
8. If chosen, a new, previously unperformed chamber work, around 10-15 minutes long, must be submitted by October 5^th, 2018. This work must demonstrate some knowledge of Korean traditional music and the 20th century contemporary Korean modernism.
   
   
9. Chosen composers are invited to the concert and additionally give a short talk on their new works.

More information

• We are happy to write an invitation letter for those who require a visa to come to the United States, however, fees will not be reimbursed.
  
  
• To ensure fairness, judges will receive the scores anonymously.
  
  
• Musicians who perform the new works will be chosen by the Foundation.
  
  
• The Foundation has the right to all the recordings made at the concert. Composers are required to seek permission for the use of recordings.

Theme for 2018

The Lake

My mind would dash and run
But my eyes, wind-washed, still meditate.

At times I invite swans, and unloose them;
Embracing the shores I weep at night.

As I ponder the shadow of a dim star,
Purple mist settles like a thinking cap.

A Tall Tree

Stretching to the blue sky,
Burned by time but standing tall-
Don’t put on blossoms in the spring.

Brandishing old spiders’ webs,
Fluttering on the path of an endless dream,
Your mind has no regret.
If you find dark shadows gloomy,
Tumble down into the lake’s bottom
Where no wind can shake you!

-By Yi Yuksa (1904-1944)-
-Translated by Peter H. Lee-

* Please feel free to choose one or both

Yi Yuksa (1904-1944) was a Korean poet and an independence activist. He is considered nationally to be one of the most important poets. His works symbolize the spirit of the Korean people during the Japanese occupation of the country.

Peter H. Lee is professor of Korean and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include Anthology of Korean Literature: From Early Times to the Nineteenth Century, Celebration of Continuity: Themes in Classic East Asian Poetry, and A Korean Storyteller’s Miscellany. These translations of Yi Yuksa’s poems are taken from Lee’s An Anthology: Modern Korean Literature.

Juries

Daniel Weymouth (USA)

Daniel Weymouth's work has been described as "power-color" music, combining the kinesis, density, compact forms, and pace of popular music — of which he is still an active performer — with the harmonic spikiness and attraction to texture and tone-color of the European avant-garde.

He composes for a wide variety of ensembles, using both standard and electronic instruments, including computer-interactive ones, and works involving theatrics and lighting. Commissions have come from the Lüneburg New Music Ensemble, the Ensemble des Deux Mondes, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, the Guild Trio and Duo Diorama, as well as numerous performers, theaters and dance companies.

His compositions have been performed throughout Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States and appear on the SEAMUS and New World Record labels as well as with MIT Press. As a conductor, Dan has led numerous ensembles, including Neue Musik Lüneburg, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players and Stony Brook's Contemporary Chamber Players. He also performs on organ, piano, melodica and accordion in a variety of setting, including as keyboardist for the Claudia Jacobs Band.

For education, encouragement and enlightenment Dan likes to acknowledge Jere Hutcheson, H. Owen Reed and Charles Ruggiero at Michigan State University and Richard Felciano, Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent two years in Paris working at two computer-music facilities, IRCAM and Iannis Xenakis's CEMAMu. Since 1989, he has been on the Composition faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he has served as Chair of Music, Director of the Graduate Program in Music, and as one of the founding Directors of cDACT (Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture and Technology).

Park Chang Soo (South Korea)

Park Chang Soo, born in 1964, Seoul, South Korea, is a composer and pianist who has been internationally active since the 20th Century. Owning a distinctive place in the field of music performance, Park officially debuted in music performance in the Batangol Small Theater in 1986. Since then, with his works that embody different forms and styles, Park has relentlessly pursued freshness into his works. He is renowned for his work , performed in Japan, which showed forceful dynamism that emotionally moves people and demonstrated his potential as a performer. His major works include <100 Hours of Fantasia (1982)> and which he performed for 24 hours and 12 minutes.

Park has created total art using computers, installations, videos, and performing arts such as dance music, drama music, and experimental movie music. Following the music director Kim Young-Hee's MUTDANCE, Park presented his music pieces in 18 countries worldwide. Since 2003, he has recently focused on adding his improvisational music on silent films.

He demonstrated originality in interpreting silent films with 'Unheimlich Special' which was co-hosted by the Seoul Art Cinema and the Goethe Institute of Korea. He also performed on films of Carl Theodor Dreyer, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Jean Epstein in Jeonju International Film Festival and the Seoul International Film Festival.

His challenges even brought him to contribute to the National Cultural Foundation. Highly recognized as a competitive art director, he enthusiastically participates in developing the performing arts culture. Holding the first House Concert at his house in 2002, Park has ceaselessly held over 500 concerts of diverse genres such as classical music, popular music, traditional Korean music, experimental music, etc, which directly contributed to making a strong cultural foundation throughout Korea despite its small sizes.

Park created a new paradigm for the performing arts industry by holding the 'Free, Music Festival 2012 – House Concert in Your Town.' Through the cultural projects that hold 100 concerts at 23 concert halls in 21 cities, The House Concert clearly showed the possibility of revitalizing derelict concert halls and rural citizens' craving for the culture. Since 2013, The House Concert has been regularly hosting concerts at various cultural arts centers nationwide based on this festival, and has also proposed a new paradigm in the culture world by hosting (65 simultaneous nationwide concerts all at the same moment) and (94 simultaneous concerts from Korea, China, Japan). Recently, it has successfully hosted (2015~2017), which held concerts from all over the world throughout the entire month of July, and continues to voice the importance of the proliferation of foundation of culture with a series of projects.

Filling in the music director position of 'SNU Experimental Music Festival', 'Jeonju International Film Festival – Son Image','Jeonju International Sori Festival – Musica Ataraxia', 'Voice of Asia' and 'Ulju Odyssey 2014', Park has also been responsible as the artistic director of the annual project 'Free, Music Festival' in 2008. He published 'House Concert, When Open Its Door (Eumaksekye)' celebrating the 200th the House Concert and released his experimental album 'Infinite Finitude' on the Audioguy label.

Yezu Woo (South Korea, USA), Artistic Director

Violinist Yezu Woo made her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2004, where she became the youngest performer to play all 24 of Niccolo Paganini's Caprices for solo violin. Since then, she has been invited to perform at the United Nations and traveled extensively for performances at Lincoln Center and Merkin Hall in New York, Smetana Hall in Prague, and the storied Musikverein in Vienna.

Along with her focus in the classical music field, Yezu also performed with the KBS Korean Traditional Instruments Orchestra where she blended the Korean and Western music, which is an identifier for Yezu both musically and culturally, having lived in both Western and Eastern societies.

Yezu co-founded and served as the Artistic Director of Shattered Glass, a conductor-less string ensemble based in NYC, from 2012 to 2016, and she is currently the Artistic Director of New York in Chuncheon Music Festival in her Korean hometown of Chuncheon, where she is Honorary Ambassador to the city. She is a recipient of the "Best Outstanding International Musician of the Year" (2004) award by the Arts Critics Association, as well as "Artist of the Year" (2005) by the Gangwon Talent Support Foundation of Korea.

Yezu received her B.M. from the Manhattan School of Music with Albert Markov, M.M. degree at The Juilliard School with Catherine Cho, and a performance degree from Bard College with Laurie Smukler. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate degree at the Stony Brook University.

Tomoki Park, Assistant Director

Born in 1990 in Yokohama, Japan, to Korean parentage, Tomoki Park studied at the Purcell School of Music UK, University of the Arts, Berlin, and Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is completing the Advanced Performance Studies with Peter Serkin.

In 2006 Tomoki won the top prize at the 14th Young Artists' Piano Competition in Tokyo and is a prizewinner at the 10th International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen. He has performed across Europe, Japan and America, including his first concerto performance at age 13 in the UK and recitals in Tokyo's Suntory Hall and Opera City, and London's Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Center.

Some recent engagements include his performances at Geneva's Pierre Boulez Festival (where he performed Structures Book II by Boulez) and at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, a Mozart recital in Salzburg's Solitär at Mozarteum, and Bach and Takemitsu Double Piano Concertos with Peter Serkin and the Sacramento Philharmonic. His teachers have included Pascal Devoyon and Rikako Murata in Berlin and Tessa Nicholson in the UK, and received further instructions from Charles Rosen, András Schiff, and Richard Goode. His composition teachers were Jonathan Cole, Harris Kitos and Dai Fujikura.