Contact:
Composers and Schools in Concert
Lisa Oman, Executive Director
press@composersandschools.com
High School Senior Nick Main wins scholarship and receives mentorship by professional composer Kurt Rhode endorsed by local businesses Sheet Music Plus Pres and SF State School of Music
San Francisco, CA – Composers and Schools in Concert (CSIC) has announced the winner of its 2018 Victor Salvo Music Composition Scholarship for high school students. Nick Main of Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts took this year’s composition prize with his submission, “Ora.” Nick will receive 5 hours of mentoring sessions with professional composer Kurt Rohde, and the experience will culminate in a Left Coast Chamber Ensemble reading of the musical piece he develops during his mentorship. The ensemble reading takes place on June 14, 2018 at SF State School of Music. The reading is not open to the public.
A senior, Nick studies classical voice under Samuel Faustine and has performed with ensembles and organizations such as the San Francisco Youth Chamber Orchestra and Lamplighters Musical Theatre. In addition to his vocal studies, Nick also studies music composition with Matthew Cmiel and Dan Becker through Crowden’s John Adams’ Young Composers’ Program; furthermore, he studied at the Walden School’s 2016 Young Musicians Program. His music has been performed by the Friction Quartet, Wild Rumpus, and members of Ensemble Dal Niente, as well as Formerly Known as Classical, a student new music ensemble which he directs. Nick began singing classically at age eleven with the Pacific Boychoir and began training as a soloist at fourteen under Marcelle Dronkers.
The CSIC award commemorates Victor Salvo, a much-admired Sacramento-area music teacher and member of the CSIC Board of Directors, who passed away in 2014. The initial scholarship fund was created shortly thereafter from initial generous funding by Mr. Salvo’s family and friends. The ongoing scholarship funds are now sponsored in part by SMP Press at Sheet Music Plus, SF State School of Music, and through the generous support of Evelyn Nussenbaum and Fred Vogelstein. Northern California high school students who submit original compositions demonstrating a unique musical voice and potential to benefit from professional composition mentorship are encouraged to compete for this annual scholarship.
The next scholarship awarding period has not yet opened, but check back often to Composers and Schools in Concert at www.composersandschools.com for competition details, to learn more about the organization and its work pairing professional composers with high school music programs, and to follow Nick’s musical composition progress.
Violist and composer Kurt Rohde is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellowship, the Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize, and an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as numerous commission awards. Mr. Rohde is a graduate of the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook, and has attended the Willapa Bay, Montalvo, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Programs. He is a Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of California, Davis. He serves as Artistic Advisor for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
Founded in 1992, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble forges connections through stirring presentations of chamber music across the Bay Area. By pairing new works with traditional masterpieces. The ensemble’s fourteen musicians, many of whom have played together since the 1980s, perform in different combinations, using strings, winds, guitar and piano to present a wide range of repertoire.
Composers and Schools in Concert (CSIC) is a nationwide nonprofit organization governed by a Bay Area-based Board of Directors. It is the only organization in the United States dedicated to providing high school students with an educational experience in the professional field of music composition through composer commissions, workshops, and a contemporary score library for young performers. Learn more about CSIC at www.composersandschools.com
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Composers and Schools in Concert
Composers and Schools in Concert is a nationwide nonprofit organization that supports music education and the creation and performance of contemporary music. We aim to expose and engage high school students in the concepts, techniques, and skills underlying contemporary music composition. We achieve this through three programs: composer commissions, composer workshops and a score library geared for young performers. We provide an online member directory to connect professional composers and youth music educators; we offer competitive funding for professional composers; and we provide progressive music education for young musicians.
Kurt Rohde
The music of composer and violist Kurt Rohde has been described as being “filled with exhilaration and dread. It’s a mirror of our times, It’s dark music, lit up by peckings, clackings, snaps and slides. It sounds eerie, but lyrical; sustained, but skittish; free-form, yet dancing.” (San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin.)
Violist and composer Kurt Rohde is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize, and a 2015 Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received commission awards from New Music USA – Commissioning Music/USA, the NEA, and the Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations. Mr. Rohde recently completed new works for the Lyris Quartet, ZOFO Duet, the Lydian String Quartet, eighth blackbird, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Scharoun Ensemble, pianist Genevieve Lee, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
A Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of California at Davis Department of Music, where he was co-director of the Empyrean Ensemble until 2015, Kurt is a violist with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and was a member of The New Century Chamber Orchestra from 1994 to 2014. Mr. Rohde was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2012–13. Mr. Rohde is a graduate of the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook, and has attended the Willapa Bay, Montalvo, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Programs.