Commissions and Collaborations

» 2008 Commission Winners Announced!

The Festival has a strong history of commissioning works and partnering with other arts organizations in the community. The Classical Composer Commission began in 1991 to encourage and support classical composers in Utah. This program has produced an impressive body of 14 works that represent the contemporary voice of Utah composers. The Utah Arts Festival has worked closely with the Utah Symphony in this endeavor, having had Maurice Abravanel, Joseph Silverstein and Keith Lockhart serve on the selection committees.

In 2006 the Festival received funding from the Mandel Foundation to start a new commission for Chamber Ensemble. This program has produced three impressive works by talented national composers.
 

Call for Entries for 2009! - NOW CLOSED

Check back in the fall for applications for the 2010 Commissions for Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble.

Applications will be available for the 5th annual Commission for Chamber Ensemble and the 18th annual Commission for Chamber Orchestra in the fall of 2009 to be premiered at the 2010 Utah Arts Festival under the Artistic Direction of Andrew Rindfleisch. 

The 17th Annual Utah Arts Festival Commission for Orchestra

The commissioned work will be an 8-12 minute work for a twenty-six piece orchestra. The award is $7,500. Deadline for entry is March 1, 2008.

Application procedures and information for Orchestra.

The 4th Annual Utah Arts Festival Commission for Chamber Ensemble

The commissioned work will be an 8-12 minute work for a six piece chamber ensemble. The award is $3,000.

Application procedures and information for Chamber Ensemble.
 

Commission Program Directors

John Vasconcelos Costa, Composer

John Vasconcelos Costa: has been a Fellow at The Composers Conference at Wellesley College, The Festival at Sandpoint, The Tanglewood Music Center, and The Charles Ives Center for American Music. He is the winner of the 1990 Georges Enesco International Competition and was a recipient of the Charles E. Ives Scholarship given by The American Academy of Arts & Letters. His orchestral works have seen performances by the Utah Symphony, the Utah Youth Symphony, The Memphis Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and at The Spoleto Festival by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. His chamber works have seen numerous performances throughout the US.

He was the recipient of two artist’s grants from the Utah Arts Council and has received commissions from the Prism Saxophone Quartet, the Phantom Arts Ensemble for New Music, the Utah Youth Symphony, Canyonlands, the Nova Chamber Music Series, the Barlow Foundation, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and the Utah Arts Festival for the Utah Symphony Orchestra. He participated in the American Composers Forum’s Orchestral Reading Project with the Plymouth Music Series Orchestra in Minneapolis. He was also a recipient of the Norton Stevens fellowship at the MacDowell Artist’s Colony.

John Costa is co-director of the Utah Arts Festival’s National Composers Commissioning Program and member of the Utah Arts Festival’s Board of Directors. He was a past recipient of the Composers Commission for orchestra in 2000 and currently serves as an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at The University of Utah.

Henry Wolking

Henry Wolking is a composer, performer (trombone), conductor, author, chairman of jazz studies and professor of music at the University of Utah. He received his BME from the University of Florida, where he graduated with honors, and the Phi Beta Kappa Creative Achievement Award. He left behind in the Music Department a dozen jazz band compositions, two symphonic band works, a string orchestra piece, and many small chamber works. He moved next to study composition with Martin Mailman at North Texas State University, where he simultaneously pursued interests in jazz and classical composition, as well as trombone performance. By the time he was awarded his master's degree, at the age of 23, his reputation as a composer and performer, strengthened by his numerous published compositions, and prizes, brought him to the University of Utah as head of the jazz area.

His jazz and serious works have been played and recorded by the finest orchestras and jazz ensembles in the world. From the Utah Symphony, which in 1982 premiered his Symphony No. 1 "Lydian Horizon" ( a semi-finalist in the 1982 Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards), to recordings and performances with the Warsaw Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Jazz Orchestra. He has over 20 compositions for orchestra which include 2 four movement symphonies, a 30 minute ballet, 8 concertos, 4 fantasies, 5 jazz works, and a tango. His Horn Concerto was recorded and broadcast by the New Zealand Symphony in 1985, and since then, his orchestral works have received performances and recordings by many orchestras including; the Utah, Baltimore, Fresno, New Mexico, Phoenix, Louisville, Colorado Springs, Greenville, Elgin, Rochester, Boise, Walla Walla, Brataslava, Cedar Rapids, Springfield, Fairbanks, Nashville, North Carolina, Millwaukee, Kallamazoo, Cincinnati, Warsaw Philharmonic, London Symphony and various other community, and University orchestras. His composition, Chamber Concerto for Horn, Violin and Bassoon, won first place in the 1987 International Horn Composition Contest, and his second symphony, Saturnian Verses was a finalist in the 1991 ASCAP Nissim Awards for outstanding American orchestral compositions. His Woodwind Quintet No.1 was recorded by the Clarion Wind Quintet in 1976 for broadcast on National Public Radio and Voice of America.

He has had over 45 jazz and chamber music works published by major publishers, and over 50 more published through his own company, Wolking Music Publications. His ballet, Forever Yesterday, premiered in April 1992, and was broadcast on the NPR show, Performance Today. A revised rendition of the Ballet that includes narrator and soprano solo was premiered in June of 1995 in Boise Idaho. His 30 minute jazz influenced Trombone Concerto was premiered by the Utah Symphony in 1994, and was subsequently taken on tour by that orchestra. Classical recordings include: Powell Canyons (MMC), Drama in Music (CRS), The Music of Henry Wolking and Ramiro Cortes (Crystal), House of Sky (CRS), Pangaea, (CRS), Forests (MMC),and A Luta Continua and Methenyology on VMM 'Music From Six Continents" CD series. His arrangements of Gershwin for two pianos and voice have just been released by the Duehlmeier/Gritton Duo on the Centaur label, and several other chamber and orchestral recordings are in progress.

Mr. Wolking has been a yearly recipient of ASCAP Awards (Standard Awards Panel) since 1982. He is a former National Chairman for Jazz Theory of the National Association of Jazz Educators, and has published many articles on jazz theory in the NAJE magazine. Performances on trombone include classic contemporary trombone literature as well as with various jazz groups at many festivals: two years in a row at Telluride, Colorado; Montreux, Switzerland, and festivals throughout the United States. He was awarded the 1989 Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Florida Department of Music where they devoted three days to performances of his jazz, chamber, and orchestral music.

The Commission for Chamber Ensemble is proudly
supported by The Mandel Foundation.

Composer Commission Partner: Libby Gardner Concert Hall