MusicTeacherGifts.com 10th Music Competition, Ages 15 & 16
2023 Compositions by Ages 15 and 16 Entries - Distinguished Judges are Maestro Lucas Richman, Em Singleton and Murphy Severtson
Age 15: 1st Place, Jaeyoon Kim; 2nd Place, Mia Lore; 3rd Place, Daniel Lee
Age 16: 1st Place, Sandy Chen; 2nd Place, Hannah Chen; 3rd Place, Jeremy Cotturone; Honorable Mention, Anushu Mutnuru
Find from ages 17 and 18 HERE, and from ages 10 to 14 HERE.
The pieces are listed in alphabetical order for each of the ages.
Age 15 Compositions
Gabriel Baggio, “Sonatina Em Sol Maier”
Gabriel Baggio is a Brazilian composer and pianist. He is fifteen years old and in the tenth grade. He started studying music composition with Marco Antônio Silva (https://amajorclass.com/) in 2022.
Phoebe Baldasare, ”River of Iris”
Phoebe was drawn to music from a very early age. She was known for singing just about anywhere she went. On occasion, her second grade teacher would even join her in song. In the 8th grade, she was invited to sing in the Ohio Music Education Association’s Honors Choir for her school’s regional district.
Phoebe took an interest in the piano in elementary school and began taking it seriously in the sixth grade. That same year, she taught herself how to play the ukulele. Within the next year, she began teaching herself the guitar. She has written original music on all three instruments.
Phoebe will be a high school sophomore in the fall. She has many interests outside of music including drawing, painting, tennis, lacrosse, hiking, and gardening.
William Gesler, “Deep Down”
William Gesler is a high school pianist and self taught composer who has been homeschooled since the 3 rd grade. He began playing piano around age 11 and began composing at 13. Composers that inspire his music creation are Toby Fox, Yojiro Noda (from Radwimps), and Danny Elfman to name a few. He also enjoys classical music especially from Chopin, Shostakovich, Mozart, and Debussy. He aspires to be a video game/film soundtrack composer and appreciates the opportunity to compose and further his musical knowledge through this competition.
Jaeyoon Kim, “Where It All Begins”, 1st Place
Jaeyoon Kim is a 15-year-old pianist and composer currently under the tutelage of Kelly Nam from George Mason University. Playing the piano since 4, he has won numerous piano competitions in South Korea, where he was brought up. Although having an entirely classical background in music, he found himself more passionate in the more contemporary areas in music. Starting to produce music electronically at the age of 11, his continuous attempts to compose various genres have come a long way: from hip-hop, funk house, dubstep, future bass, and finally coming back to classical.
Greatly inspired by film soundtrack composers such as Hans Zimmer and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kim’s compositions encompass a cinematic and orchestral nature, with occasional cameo appearances of electronic features. After obtaining 3rd place in the National PTA Reflections Competition and 2nd place in the NVMTA composition competition, this marks Kim’s first year participating at composition competitions. Furthermore, he is eager to, and is confident that he will continue accomplishing his musical goals in the future years. His previous works are available at ‘pororoororoq’ on Soundcloud.
Daniel Lee, “Rise”, 3rd Place
Daniel Lee is a 15-year-old composer with a strong passion for music. He started learning piano from Mr. Fan Li at the age of 7 and showed interest in composing. Under the tutelage of NEC faculty member Sarah Infini Tarkagi in the past four years, Daniel's skills as a composer truly flourished. Her mentorship has been instrumental in helping Daniel cultivate his unique sound, drawing inspiration from modern jazz composers like Tigran Hamasyan and Nikolai Kapustin, as well as classical composers and Japanese film music. Daniel has written not only for the piano, but also for synthesizer, and for voice, and also for a Jazz quartet whose songs have been premiered and performed by a multi-grammy award-winning musician Mark Walker.
As an avid classical pianist, Daniel has won 2nd place in the Crescendo International Competition in 2022, and 2nd place in MMTA and BSPC piano competition.
Aside from his musical pursuits, Daniel has demonstrated a strong interest in science and linguistics. He has competed in science Olympiad and lead the team to win multiple MIT science trivia challenges, and entered the North American Computational Linguistics invitationals this year. In his free time, you may spot Daniel mountain biking or indulging in spicy food.
Campbell Leiloglou, “Mesosphere”
Campbell Leiloglou is a fifteen-year-old homeschool sophomore who enjoys piano, reading, and drawing. His compositions have received honorable mention in the 2019 TMTA Original Composition Contest and first place in the 9th Annual MusicTeacherGifts.com Youth Music Composition Competition. His ensemble piece “Mesosphere” has placed 2nd in Texas in the 2023 NFMC Junior Composers Contest and 1st in state for TMTA's 2023 Composition Competition.
Mia Lore, “Winter’s Ballad”, 2nd Place
Mia Lore is a high schooler and a lover of music and storytelling. She began playing piano at age five, completing CM Certification Level 10 for piano in early 2023. Her love of the arts continued to
branch into many different areas, including voice and composition. She began studying voice at age eleven, winning numerous awards including 1st place in the 2023 USIMC Competition, VOCE 2023 Artist Competition, and VAYA 2021 Competition. Mia also started composing at age eight, and now writes numerous lyrical, orchestral, and solo pieces. She is studying composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the Pre-College program’s Technology and Applied Composition department. Mia’s compositions have been recognized in multiple competitions including 2nd place in the Reflections Competition 2020 and Honorable Mention in the Composer’s Today Competition 2023. But above all, Mia hopes to offer a bit of joy with every piece she writes throughout her career!
Sage Wang, “Stars”
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Age 16 Compositions
Zara Bhuiyan, “Enchanted Halls”
Gabe Chen, “A Nice Stroll”
Gabriel Chen is a high schooler in Memphis, Tennessee. He started playing violin at the age of 7 and has recently taken up composition. His first piece was his entry for this competition, “A Nice Stroll”.
Hannah Chen, “Fragments of the Past”, 2nd Place
Hannah Chen is a 16 year old composer and harpist from the San Francisco Bay Area, California. She currently attends Oakland School for the Arts in the instrumental music department and San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College, studying composition with Mario Godoy and Lukáš Janata and harp with Jennifer Ellis. Hannah is the principal harpist of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and has previously been the harpist for the Contra Costa Wind Symphony. As a composer, Hannah has been in programs such as the Argus Quartet Composers Institute, Wildflower Composers Camp, San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Technology and Applied Composition Immersive, and Luna Composition Lab. She has received prizes from the Bay Area Creative Foundation Youth Awards, SFCM Pre-College Kris Getz competition, the Warren County Young Composers Competition and the National YoungArts Foundation. Her works have been performed by Music at the Mission’s Chamberfest, and by SFCM faculty members and students and her harp solo was recently premiered as a Featured Composer at the American Harp Society’s National Harp Summer Institute. Hannah will be attending Boston University Tanglewood Institute this summer, awarded a full scholarship for the Young Artist Composition Program. As a performer, she is a two-time 1st prize winner in the BACHAS Yvonne LaMothe Schwager Competition, has won 1st in the United States International Music Competition, 1st in the New York International Young Musician Competition, 1st in the New York Laureate Competition, 1st in the Charleston International Baroque Competition, the Grand prize in the Prodigy International Music Competition, the Grand prize in the American Soloist International Competition as well as top prizes in the US Open Music Competition and the American Harp Society National Competition. She has also been a member of Music at the Mission’s Chamberfest and been a performer in the East Bay Music Festival as a harp trio. Hannah aspires to be a film composer.
Sandy Chen, “Helianthus”, 1st Place
Sandy Chen is a passionate 16-year-old composer, pianist and violist. She started playing the piano at 4 years old and earned a distinction in her diploma exam at 13. Around the same time, Sandy also discovered her love for composing and started learning the Viola in the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of string instruments. So far, she has composed works for solo piano, chamber groups, voice, and is currently working on a piece for string orchestra. At the moment, Sandy attends a British boarding school, but starting in September, she will also be attending the Junior Academy of RAM to further expand her musical journey.
Sandy wrote Helianthus last year as a response to the atrocities happening in Ukraine - she later started a campaign with this piece and managed to raise over £20,000 in the end for the Ukrainian refugees.
Jeremy Cotturone, “Something’s Lurking”, 3rd Place
Jeremy is a 16-year-old from Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He has always enjoyed creating music. At age 9, he won his first composition contest. Since then, his pieces have won awards from both the Wisconsin Federation of Music Teachers and the Wisconsin School Music Association. He is a two-time finalist in the St. Norbert’s Composing Competition and has had two of his works performed by the college. In addition to composing, Jeremy plays piano and percussion.
Benjamin Goodwin, “Cold Winds”
Kristian Jensen, “Night on the Balcony”
Kristian Jensen is a sophomore in high school. They started learning viola in middle school orchestra. During the pandemic, Kristian spent time learning how to play piano and started arranging medleys of video game music. Taking AP Music Theory this year really expanded their understanding of music and started an interest in composition. Kristian enjoyed the process of combining 7 years of experience as a storyteller in musical theatre with their 4 years of orchestral experience in their first composition.
Anusha Mutnuru, “Ambivalence”
Anusha Mutnuru is from West Chester, Pennsylvania, and an ardent pianist, singer, and composer. She started learning piano when she was five, and she has taken voice lessons from the age of three. Anusha discovered her love for composition at the beginning of high school, and dedicated herself to many advanced music theory classes to become more experienced in her compositions. In her free time, Anusha enjoys performing in theatrical productions, conducting biochemical experiments, and volunteering at her local hospitals.
Samuel Skidmore-Hess, “Dance for the Clarinet and Piano, Hora”
My name is Samuel Skidmore-Hess, I'm 17 and from Georgia. I enjoy mathematics, physics, literature by Kafka, and musicology. Both my parents are professor's at a local university (dad political science and mom African history). With my music I'm trying to blend traditional eastern jewish music (klezmer) and traditional classical music. My biggest influences are Shostakovich, Ravel, and Daniel Khan. In this piece I take a jewish dance form (hora) and scale (phrygian dominant i.e. the ava rabah scale) to create a concert piece for a clarinetist (a common instrument in Klezmer). The middle section of the piece contains the melody of Hava Nagelia in the clarinet and the piano taking the rhythm but varying the melody to create dialogue between the two instruments.
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