The Frost School of Music with Ensemble Ibis Composition Competition for student composers

Ensemble Ibis 2022-23 Competition to be announced soon!

View Current and Past Winners

There are two divisions, as follows:
Division 1: Open to composers who will be enrolled in high school as of 9/1/2021.
Division 2: Open to composers who will be enrolled as college undergraduates as of 9/1/2021. Students enrolled in the Frost School of Music are ineligible.

Compositions may be up to 10 minutes in duration.

Submissions for the competition may be for any combination of one to 15 instruments drawn from the following:

• Flute (doubling alto and piccolo)
• Oboe (1)
• Clarinet (doubling bass) (1)
• Bassoon (1)
• Horn (1)
• Trumpet (1)
• Trombone (1)
• Tuba (1)
• Piano/keyboard (1)
• Percussion (up to 2)
• Violin (2)
• Viola (1)
• Cello (1)
• Bass (1)

Applicants may submit only one work.

Applicants should submit their score electronically as a pdf file to Charles Norman Mason, Chair of Composition/Theory at: c.mason@miami.edu with the subject line “Frost Composition Submission, Division [1 or 2]: [composer’s last name]”. Any submissions without this subject line may be eliminated from the competition.

Recording of the work. The recording must be in mp3 format. MIDI realizations are acceptable.

The title of attachments for recording and score should be labeled with the last name of the composer and the name of the piece. Both files should have the same title (with just the extension of the file different).

There is no submission fee.

Submit today!

Applicants will be judged on their originality, artistic promise, and score presentation by a panel of award-winning composers.

Decisions will be announced on our website.

The winning composers will receive a $250 prize and consideration by  Ensemble Ibis at the Frost School of Music for future programming.

The Frost Composition Competition is presented in honor of Dennis Kam, Professor Emeritus at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, and Chair of Composition/Theory for more than three decades. He retired in May 2013 and passed away on December 25, 2018. While at Frost, he founded and conducted The Other Music Ensemble; a contemporary music ensemble with the primary mission of being a resource for young composers. Kam was passionate about the role of music in the community and had long been dedicated to the development of young composers and musicians.

The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami is one of the largest and best music schools located in a private university in the U.S., and one of the most comprehensive in all of higher education. Known for its aesthetic diversity and openness to the wide variety of options existing in the ever-changing and progressive world of composition, the Composition Program at the Frost School of Music has a long tradition of distinguished faculty, alumni, and students. Faculty members in Composition include Dorothy Hindman, Juraj Kojs, Charles Norman Mason, Lansing McLoskey, Shawn Crouch, and Scott Stinson. Our past distinguished composers-in-residence were Melinda Wagner (2019) and George Lewis (2020), Tania Leon (2021), Anthony Davis (2022).