Composer Opportunities

University of Louisville School of Music

2025 Frank Robert Abell Young Composers Competition for New Chamber Music

First Prize: $10,000 USD

Second Prize: $6,000 USD

This Award was established by a generous bequest from the estate of Frank Robert Abell, a longtime Louisville philanthropist with close ties to the University of Louisville School of Music. He had a deep love for contemporary music and a strong desire to help younger composers.

Eligibility: Composers residing in the United States, age 18-26 on the deadline for submission, August 1, 2025. Faculty and staff of the University of Louisville and their spouses and children are not eligible to enter. Current and former students of the University of Louisville and their spouses are not eligible to enter.

The University of Louisville School of Music will seek out opportunities to perform the winning works, but such performances are not guaranteed. In the event of a performance, the Award Committee will underwrite the composer's expenses (travel, lodging, and meals) to Louisville to attend rehearsals and the performance. The winning composers agree to give a presentation about their music to the Composition Seminar and engage in other similar activities while in Louisville.

We are pleased to announce Follow My Score 2025! FMS25 is an effort to promote and curate many works by living composers. Approximately 50 works will be selected by the Score Follower jury. Selected works will be made into "score videos" by our production team, and uploaded onto our YouTube channel. Deadline: March 25, 2025YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Selected works will be split equally into two categories:

• Follow My Score: Score Follower will synchronize the media to the score on your behalf if not already done so. If a work does not have a traditional score and recording (e.g. a work with a visual component), it will still be considered for this category. In this case, make sure to include a link to your video as an external link.

• Scorefol.io Highlight: Works with scores and audio already synchronized with scorefol.io will also be considered for Scorefol.io Highlights. Score Follower makes no distinction in quality between the two categories. Works with already synchronized scores will have a higher chance of being selected due to being qualified for both categories.

Result notifications will go out by 17 May. If you want to make a score video in the meantime, you can build one in your browser now: scorefol.io/dashboard. This is not a commissioning contest.