Garth Newel International Composition Competition (13th) — Piano Quartet

Garth Newel's composition competition is built to grow the piano quartet repertoire, so entries must be conceived for that specific combination — violin, viola, cello and piano — rather than arranged from a trio, quintet, or other format. There's no age or citizenship restriction and no entry fee, and no time limit on the piece itself, but it has to be new: works already given a professional premiere, already commercially recorded, published in any instrumentation, or needing live electronics beyond stereo playback aren't eligible.

The prize is $3,000 (the Glorvina and Richard Lynn New Music Prize), plus a travel stipend of up to $1,000 to attend the piece's premiere by the Garth Newel Piano Quartet at their summer festival in Hot Springs, Virginia, where the performance is also livestreamed and recorded and the composer is invited into a short residency with rehearsal access and the chance to network with visiting students.

Submissions are anonymous: send a score and parts, by mail or email, labeled only with a pseudonym, with your real contact details and a short bio kept separate, unopened until after judging. Large electronic files go through Dropbox or Google Drive; physical entries are mailed to Garth Newel Music Center. The current deadline is November 1, 2027, with results by January 31, 2028. The composer keeps copyright but grants the Quartet an exclusive one-year performance license, and any later performance must credit the Quartet as the work's commissioning ensemble. Garth Newel doesn't publish its judging criteria or jury.