Exciting competition for young composers

The Chorus is offering generous prizes in the second of an exciting competition which we first  launched in 2022. Budding young composers are invited to submit a short choral work for us to sing in at least four parts. The competition is open to people from 18 to 35 inclusive who were born, lived or studied in Sheffield.

The winner will receive £1,500 and their work will be premiered at the next festival on Sunday 23 March 2025, along with new works by established composer Stephen Johnston and Faure’s beautiful Requiem.

‘Stella Jockel was a Sheffield teacher and vicar’s wife who sang alto with the Chorus for many years.’ explained Chorus President Rachel Copley. ‘She bequeathed a generous legacy to the Chorus following her death, and she would be thrilled that we are using it to support young composers in this way. Fourteen of them applied last time, and we loved singing the winning works at the finale of Classical Sheffield’s three-day classical music festival’.

Applicants can choose between two texts specially commissioned for the competition by award-winning poets Katharine Towers and Susie Wilson, who are both alto members of the choir. Katharine won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for The Floating Man and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for The Remedies, while Susie won the Disabled Poets Prize for her anthology Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed.

The competition will be judged by conductor and organist Darius Battiwalla, Music Director of the Chorus, together with renowned composer and organist Philip Wilby and choral director and conductor Ellie Slorach. The deadline for entries is 31 December 2024 and the shortlist will be announced early in the new year. For details see www.sheffieldphil.org/youngcomposer