Abraham Gomez (Mexico) is the winner of the 2021 Calefax Composers Competition with his composition Astro Errante.
Gomez wins the sum of € 2.000 for the winning composition. Depending on the development of the pandemic Astro Errante will either be premiered live or recorded in 2022 by Calefax. In addition, the winning composition will be performed by various other Reed Quintets around the world.
The jury consisted of all five musicians from Calefax with composer Ned McGowan as external chairman. All 47 submissions were assessed anonymously. The jury: “Astro Errante is a very sonorous piece with a strong structure and it makes excellent use of the sound of the five reed instruments. It is interesting to see how the composer refers to an exsisting piece (Samuel Barber’s Summer Music) both in melodies and form, but then creates a complete new reality with this material.”
The winner wasn’t announced at the annual Calefax’ PAN Festival as in previous years, as this year’s PAN was postponed due to the coronavirus. Instead, the announcement was made online, which you can watch back in the video below.
Special Mentions from the World Wide Reed Quintet Network
In 2012, Calefax started the ‘World Wide Reed Quintet Network’. A platform for all Reed Quintets in the world, groups that follow in the footsteps of Calefax, the ‘inventors’ of this new genre. Since eight years, a growing number of reed quintets from the network have joined the composers competition, so that the winners and other participants can look at performances of their work around the world.
Two reed quintets from this network chose their own winner from the 2021 entries and Calefax shared their own special mention:
from Kalamos Reed Quintet (Croatia):
• XEQS by Emircan Pehlivan (Turkey)
from Vanguard Reed Quintet (United States):
• Momentos Peruanos by Daniel Cueto (Peru)
• Shockwave by Chris Evan Hass (United States)
from Calefax (Netherlands):
• XEQS by Emircan Pehlivan (Turkey)
With the Calefax Composers Competition we like to care for all entries – also the works that didn’t win the Prize or a Special Mention. On this page you can find the free downloads of many entries from previous years. The 2021 entries will be added as soon as permission from the composers is in.
Past winners of the Calefax Composers Competition are:
Patrick John Jones (2020, UK) (link)
Nina Shekar (2020, US) (link)
Ugurcan Öztekin (2019, Turkey) (link)
Yeonju Kim (2018, South-Korea)
Yonatan Ron (2018, Israel) (link)
Mithatcan Öcal (2017, Turkey)
Janco Verduin (2015, Netherlands) (link)
Michael Walsh (2014, UK)
Corey Dundee (2013, USA)
Didier Marc Garin (2012, France)
José Mora-Jiménez (2011, Costa-Rica/Netherlands) (link)
Jeffrey Harrington (2010, VS/France)
Heleen Verleur (2009, Netherlands)
Holger de Bruin (2008, Netherlands)