***CALL FOR SCORES 2023 COMING SOON***
CONGRATULATIONS to the Call for Scores 2022 AWARDEES
The Naval Academy Band Call for Scores Composition Competition was founded in 2021 to expand the repertoire of new works for our unique instrumentation. During 2022, the USNA Band solicited and accepted woodwind and mixed chamber wind scores for review. We received over 70 submissions from a diverse and international pool of composers. The following three works will be performed as the centerpiece of an upcoming concert in the Baltimore area in Fall 2023.
WINNER: Sinfonietta for Mixed Chamber Wind Ensemble by Jacob Evarts
Jacob Evarts is a composer, hornist, and current sophomore at the University of Georgia. He has been composing since the age of 10. He entered and won the Georgia Music Educators Composition Competition for small ensembles for 5 straight years, from 2016 to 2020. His first winning composition for large ensemble was awarded by the Warren County Summer School of Music in 2019. His winning piece “Wildcat Fanfare” was written to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the opening of both Locust Grove Middle and Locust Grove High Schools, his middle and high school alma maters. In January 2020, he was awarded first runner-up in the Lowell Mason House music advocacy competition. He was chosen as one of the 2022 National Young Composers Challenge winners with his work for full orchestra, Wonder of the World. He has also had his works performed by the US Naval Academy Band and the US Air Force Band of the West. When not composing, Evarts plays horn in various UGA large ensembles, and mellophone in the UGA Redcoat Marching Band.
The Naval Academy Band Chamber Winds will record Sinfonetta for release later in 2023.
HONORABLE MENTION: Sail Away! by Daniel Kim
Daniel Kim is a composer who strives to write in a variety of genres - from classical to contemporary and film to game music. His works draw influence from various composers and eras like Korngold, Prokofiev, Hisaishi, and Larkin. He has written for small and large ensembles such as string quartets, chamber orchestras, wind ensembles, and electronic. He is currently a member of the Asian Memory Project, writing and arranging music for Asian-inspired events.
HONORABLE MENTION: Introduction and Fuga Interrumpida for 2 Clarinets and Bass Clarinet by Dr. Peter Temko
Dr. Peter Temko is a Greensboro, North Carolina, native and current resident of Atlanta, Georgia. He began his undergraduate music theory studies at Florida State University with Roy Johnson, Harold Schiffman, John Boda, and Lew Pankaskie, and studied clarinet with Harry Schmidt. Temko earned his Bachelor and Master of Music Theory from the Manhattan School of Music, and his mentors were Ludmilla Ulehla and Nick Flagello. He taught at Trenton Junior High School #1 after graduating, before returning to Florida State University to complete doctoral studies. Temko earned his Ph.D. in Music Theory at Florida State University where he continued his compositional studies with John Boda and worked to set up the first Moog synthesizer at FSU. He was the graduate assistant in clarinet at FSU between 1968-1970 for Harry Schmidt.
His higher education teaching career started at Florida A&M University, where Temko was the Chair of Music Theory from 1970-1974. He spent most of his career at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga from 1974 to 1999, teaching music theory, electronic music, composition, clarinet, and saxophone. Throughout his time at UTC, he served in many leadership roles, including Chair of Graduate Programs and Music Theory, Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Acting Head of the Music Department. In the summers at UTC, he was active in the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts. Publishing accomplishments include Temko’s Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano (Shawnee Press, 1977) and A Practical Approach to Form in Music, co-authored with Peter Spencer (Prentice Hall, 1988). As a performer, Temko gave many solo and chamber music recitals while at UTC and played clarinet and bass clarinet in the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra from 1974-1995. Temko also had several commissions and performances of his music regionally and nationally during this period. Some of these include the Five Stages of Grief for Soprano, Violin, Cello, and Piano, for which he was awarded the 1979 Tennessee Music Teacher Association Composer of Year; two children’s operas, The Elephant’s Child (1984) and The Butterfly That Stamped (1984), based on Rudyard Kipling stories with librettos by Sue Spencer; Three Movements for Clarinet Alone (1994) for clarinetist Jerry Hall; WindPsalms Quintet for Winds (1996) in honor of the 10th decade of Cadek Conservatory of Music; and Still Voices (1998) for Cadek Department of Music’s chamber series.
Temko remained an active composer and clarinetist after retirement in 1999, beginning with a premiere of his work Weavings (2001) for the bi-annual UTC Contemporary Composers Symposium. He co-founded the Florida-based clarinet ensemble, Licorice Schtick (Pete Temko, John Creveling, Dave Irwin, and Larry Kleinfeld), and wrote several pieces performed by that group, including Licorice Schtick Variations (2003), Introduction and Fuga Interrumpida (2004) and Introductory Suite (2007). More recently, Temko wrote Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections (2014) for Nikolasa Tejero and Wanda Yang Temko, based on the poetry of author and cousin, Leza Lowitz. This project was funded by the Southern Composers League and was revised in 2022 for I voci delle leonesse (Meghan Merciers and Gretchen Windt). Writings by female authors are a recurrent inspiration for Temko’s compositions, including Linda Pastan’s poetry, The Five Stages of Grief. This served as the basis for Temko’s earlier work for piano trio and soprano and his more recent choral work, performed by Early Bird, a professional chamber choir in Atlanta, in 2021.
