American Composers Forum’s newly launched NextNotes High School Composition Awards is noteworthy simply as a national contest dedicated to recognizing teenaged composers. Knight Foundation is the founding sponsor of NextNotes. When asked about the larger rationale for such a contest, Suzanna Altman, ACF’s Director of Education and Community Engagement, notes that “there is great societal benefit to recognizing and encouraging creative thinkers, and we haven’t been nearly as good at doing that for the musically creative as we have for other creative fields. NextNotes will help change that.” The ecumenical nature of ACF’s new initiative deserves special mention, too. The NextNotes competition is designed to showcase all manner of high-achieving teen composers, creating original music in any style or genre – from hip hop to jazz improvisation, classical, indie rock, R&B, singer/songwriter fare, and everything in between. Altman says, “Another of the motivations of the program is to encourage [widespread] adoption of the title ‘composer.’ We think if you’re creative and making original music, you’re a composer – period.”

The Composers Forum (a Knight Arts grantee) already has two well-regarded national youth programs, BandQuest and ChoralQuest, for which world-class composers are commissioned to write music specifically intended for performance by young musicians. “These two programs are geared toward middle-level (middle-school) performers, though they are often so good that groups of all ages and abilities pick them up,” Altman explains.

ACF’s NextNotes contest closes January 12, 2015 and is open to teenaged composers working in any genre or style (between the ages of 14 and 18, or 9th through 12th grades).

Altman continues: “NextNotes is different in that the great composers are the youths themselves (as are the composer mentors, of course). It’s also our first initiative focused exclusively on teens. While we want to help teachers introduce composition to their students as middle-schoolers, we know that many high-schoolers are beyond the need for an introduction to composition and are now ready for true mentorship from experienced composers. In a sense, BandQuest and ChoralQuest are step one – listening to and playing great music, starting to write your own [ i.e. there are ‘create your own’ sorts of lessons accompanying each piece of music provided by the program]. NextNotes is step two, refining and developing an established creative voice. Then, ACF’s other programs, like the Composer Institute, are the steppingstones that take them beyond our ‘Education’ initiatives.”

Here’s what’s on offer to contest winners, according to the program description:

Six NextNotes composers will receive: mentorship from professional composers and musicians over a two-day workshop, flights to/from the workshop, room/board during the workshop, a public concert of the winning works, a scholarship of $1,000 to be used for formal composition studies, a recording of the culminating concert and also be eligible to receive up to $500 in “bring it home” funds to share their accomplishment with their hometown.

When asked, specifically, to clarify the purpose of “bring it home” funds, Altman explains: “We’re really excited about this part! It’s something our advisors came up with when we convened the national advisory group who helped us shape the program. They loved the idea of students sharing their accomplishment with their home communities. So, we will work with the [winning] NextNotes Composers to help them in whatever way they’d like to use their ‘bring it home’ funds.” But ACF is leaving the specifics for each young person to decide for themselves.  “For some, it may mean a concert,” she says, “but for others, the best use of their [bring it home] funds may not be a live public venue at all, but rather pressing a CD – or maybe something we haven’t even considered yet.”

Altman says, fundamentally, ACF is convinced of the compounding cultural dividends in catching these young artists early, that encouraging them with tangible recognition for their creative achievement before they leave high school “will help spur them into even greater creative thinking as they move forward in life.”

“And that creativity may stay in the musical field, but it’s just as likely to spill over into other important [arenas] as well,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many young composers I’ve met who aim to work in the sciences or other areas where such creative thinking could also have a truly big impact.”

Knight Foundation is the founding sponsor of the NextNotes™ High School Composition Awards; additional funding is provided by The Augustine Foundation and the Rosemary and David Good Family Foundation. The application deadline is January 12, 2015. Interested high school composers will find more information on the website, www.NextNotes.org, or on Twitter (@NextNotes), Facebook (ACF Ed), Tumblr, Instagram and Vine.