NZCT Chamber Contest - SOUNZ Prize

Since 1965 Chamber Music New Zealand has run a chamber music contest, a performance competition for secondary school students. Since 1971 an original composition competition has run concurrently, with student groups performing the scores written by secondary school composers. Many of our leading composers and performers feature amongst the winners during that time, including Donald Armstrong, Chris Prosser, Chris Archer, Peter McClymont, Dan Poynton, Mark Menzies, Stephen de Pledge and Ross Carey . Since 1999 SOUNZ has provided the prize for the overall winner of this competition. The winning piece is performed at the National Final. 

Chamber Music New Zealand invites a leading New Zealand composer to judge the entries and the standard and range of the compositions is always an exciting aspect of the event with a number of pieces featured in the contest having gone on to be performed by professional musicians.

For example, September's Scars by Jenny Thomas which won the award in 2002, was performed by the Eroica Trio from USA in their 2003 CMNZ Celebrity Season tour (photo above).

Students entering the contest benefit not only from the feedback about their work provided by the adjudicator, but Chamber Music New Zealand also offers mentoring from other established composers to students preparing to enter the contest. More information about this is available from Chamber Music New Zealand.

Between 1999 and 2003 the winners were: Tane Upjohn Beatson (Burnside High School), Alwyn Westbrooke (Burnside High School), Timothy Donnell (Rangitoto College), Jenny Thomas (Rangitoto College) and Claire Filer (Diocesan School for Girls).

• The  2005 winner of the SOUNZ Composition Award was Karlo Margetic of Hutt Valley High School for his Chamber Concertino for clarinet, piano and string quartet. Karlo also won the competition in 2004.
• In 2006, Onslow College student Tabea Squire scored a double by winning both this prize for her string quartet Random Berg 7 as well as the SOUNZ -NZCF Choral Composition Prize as part of the BIG SING.
  
• The 2007 winner of this prize was Corwin Newall from Kaikorai Valley College in Dunedin with The Budgie for flute, clarinet and piano.
• In 2008, the winner was David Taylor from Macleans College in Auckland for his piece Myrrh, written for flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano. 
• The 2009 winner was Corwin Newall from Kaikorai Valley College, Dunedin with 57 Octaves Below for piano, flute and violin. Corwin also won this prize in 2007. 

For more information, check out the NZCT Chamber Music Contest website here or contact SOUNZ.

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