Random Access Music (RAM) — Queens New Music Festival Composition Competition (2027)

This is a chance to get a new piece of concert music performed and recorded, not a cash prize. Random Access Music's ensemble, the RAM Players, performs the winning composition at New York's Queens New Music Festival, with a professional audio and video recording made of the performance that the composer keeps rights to alongside RAM.

Anyone can enter — there's no age limit, no nationality requirement, and no entry fee. The instrumentation is specific, though: write for any combination drawn from flute (including auxiliary flutes, or the Japanese ryuteki), clarinet or bass clarinet (or the hichiriki), violin, cello and piano, using at most one player per instrumental part.

Applying means submitting a score by the January 15, 2027 deadline; the competition doesn't publish a separate recording or materials requirement beyond the score itself. Entries are judged anonymously — RAM's panel of composer and performer members reviews scores without knowing who wrote them, so prior relationships with the ensemble shouldn't carry any weight. RAM doesn't publish the specific qualities the panel weighs beyond that blind read, so there's no formal rubric to aim for beyond writing well for the stated forces.