The ASCAP / Lotte Lehmann Foundation Song Cycle Competition was founded in 2005 by the Lehmann Foundation, which invited the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) to co-present and to help bring the competition to the attention of as many composers as possible.

First, second, and third prizes were generously underwritten by Margo Garrett, a member of the Board of Directors of the Lehmann Foundation, in memory of Martha Macgoey Sollenberger. The Lehmann Foundation reached out to E.C. Schirmer Publishing, which agreed to publish the resulting commissioned first prize song cycle, and to the Joy in Singing Foundation, which agreed to present the world premiere of the commissioned first prize song cycle in New York City. A fourth prize, underwritten by Damien Top, a member of the Lehmann Foundation's Board of Advisors, was also offered in 2005 to commission a setting of poetry by Andrée Brunin, with a world premiere of the newly commissioned song slated for the 2006 "Albert Roussel International Festival" in France.

The deadline for entries was September 15, 2005. Applicants were required to be citizens, permanent residents of the United States, or enrolled students with student visas, who had not reached their 30th birthday by January 1, 2006. Each composer was allowed to submit a single work.

Applicants shall have been US citizens, permanent residents of the US, or enrolled students with student visas. One original work per composer may be submitted. A panel of professionals was convened to select the composers to be commissioned. The jury consisted of composers Sir Richard Rodney Bennett and Russell Platt, conductor Michael Morgan, and soprano Judith Kellock.

A copy of the 2005 Official Guidelines may be found here.

SCOTT GENDEL (First Prize) is currently living as a self-employed musician in Madison, Wisconsin, where he works as a vocal coach for local singers, a freelance composer and arranger, and a choral conductor for the University of Wisconsin Extension program. This past May, Scott received his DMA in composition from UW-Madison, with a minor in opera accompanying and vocal coaching. While he was working on that degree, he held the position of Associate Lecturer in composition at the UW, where he designed and taught an undergraduate composition curriculum, as well as working with a few individual students. Scott’s teachers have included Steve Dembski, Daron Hagen, and Joan Tower. Such artists as the Riverside Opera Ensemble, soprano Julia Faulkner, and The American Symphony Orchestra have performed his music. The Madison Children’s Choir, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the Bel Canto Singers, and others have commissioned Scott. Scott’s compositions have a wide-ranging scope, but he is particularly fond of vocal music, having written 10 song cycles, 9 large-scale individual songs and duets, 3 pieces for voices and orchestra, 12 choral works, a 45-minute mass for choir and chamber ensemble, and 2 operas. For more information about the composer, please visit his web site: www.scottgendel.com.

MARK BUNTAG (Second Prize) Originally from the Philippines, Mark Almazan Buntag obtained his B.M. (Composition) from Oberlin Conservatory in 1999. He subsequently obtained his M.M. (Composition) from Indiana University in 2001. Currently he remains in Indiana University, pursuing his D.M. He has been taught by Richard Hoffmann, Anna Rubin, Claude Baker, Sven-David Sandström, David Dzubay, and Don Freund.

MICHAEL Djupstrom (Third Prize), composer and pianist, has received awards and scholarships from institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP Foundation, the BMI Foundation, and the Sigurd and Jarmila Rislov Foundation, among others. In 2002, his first work for wind ensemble, Homages, was awarded the Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize from Ithaca College and the first Frederick Fennell Prize from ASCAP and the College Band Directors National Association. His works have been commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center in collaboration with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, saxophonists Donald Sinta and Brian Sacawa, and the Bishop Ireton Symphonic Wind Ensemble, among others. Selected performers of his works include the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the University of Southern California Wind Ensemble, the Eastman Wind Orchestra, the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, and the new music ensembles Brave New Works, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and the New Fromm Players at Tanglewood. As part of a team of eight composers, Djupstrom also provided music for a 2003 production of King Lear at Shakespeare & Company of Lenox, Massachusetts. He has had works published by Bright Press and by Boosey and Hawkes.

As a pianist, Djupstrom’s interest and extensive experience in solo and chamber music performance has led to appearances at venues such as the Tanglewood Music Center, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, A Capitol New Year New Year’s Eve celebration in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Brevard Music Center, where he participated in the 2004 Advanced Chamber Music Program as a member of the Phoenix Trio, an ensemble which remains active today. He has also performed with the University of Michigan Symphony Band and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra as ensemble pianist, as well as served as accompanist for the University Choir in 2002-2003 and the Men's Glee Club for 2001-2002, whose season ended in a performance tour of the southeastern United States.

Djupstrom was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1980 and began music studies at the piano at the age of eight. He continued his training at the University of Michigan with Lynne Bartholomew, Sergio de los Cobos and Katherine Collier, and began formal composition study with composers Bright Sheng, Susan Botti, William Bolcom, and Karen Tanaka. As a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2002 and 2003, Djupstrom worked with composers Michael Gandolfi, Augusta Read Thomas, Osvaldo Golijov and George Benjamin as well as conductors John Oliver and Stefan Asbury, among others; at the 2005 Aspen Music Festival and School, his teachers were Robert Beaser and Christopher Rouse. Djupstrom received his B.M. and M.A. in music composition from the University of Michigan. He currently teaches piano at Settlement Music School (Philadelphia) and is active as a freelance composer and pianist.

ELI MARSHALL (The Damien Top Prize) Perhaps the only Western composer residing in China today, Eli Marshall is developing a reputation as bridging cultures musically, with recent premieres in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macao, New York City, and Washington, D.C related to East-West exchange. With the completion of a United States Fulbright Fellowship, he recently entered a position as part-time guest professor of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Mr. Marshall has written two symphonies, three orchestral overtures, various works for both string orchestra and wind ensemble, a 'cello concerto, a violin concerto, a multitude of chamber works, and over fifty art songs. His music has been performed by ensembles and individuals including the Aeolian Winds, American Symphony Orchestra, Arditti String Quartet, 'cellist Efe Baltacigil, Bar Harbor Brass, Beijing Concert Hall, China Youth Symphony, counter)induction, Da Capo Chamber Players, Hong Kong's piano trio Opus One, Macau Orchestra, and string orchestra E Pluribus Unum Musica (Now known as ECCO). Venues for his works include the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall, New Music New Haven, Vermont Public Radio, the Washington Composers Forum, the Corcoran and Sackler Museums, the Beijing Concert Hall, the U.S. Ambassador's Residence (Beijing), and a national live broadcast on CBC Radio.

Mr. Marshall was assistant conductor for the Curtis Opera Theater in Philadelphia from 2002-03. He has also conducted the Curtis Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, the Yale Chamber Orchestra, and the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) Orchestra, with whom he worked also as assistant producer for ARSIS records. He has rehearsed and performed numerous premieres of his own orchestral works since 1999, and has performed as pianist in many of his chamber music premieres, as well as part of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and coached singers from the keyboard in cooperation with composer Guo Wenjing and conductor Edo de Waart.

Born in Maine in 1977, Mr. Marshall studied piano and trumpet as a child, in traditional repertoire and in jazz improvisation. He wrote his first piece at age eight, and continued throughout childhood to write and pursue theoretical studies independently. He was also trained as a singer, at age 15 winning the highest male score at the All-State level. At 16, he quit high school to intensify academic pursuits in college. In addition to studies in musical composition, theory, and history -- and ethnomusicology with David P. McAllester (a founder of the field) -- he pursued an extensive liberal arts regimen, graduating with honors and awards for his research in social studies.

Mr. Marshall pursued graduate studies at the Yale School of Music, majoring in composition while studying theory with Allen Forte, supplemental conducting with Laurence Leighton Smith, and collaborating with the School of Drama. Further graduate studies brought him to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. His teachers have included Robert Cornell, Daron Hagen, Ezra Laderman, Ned Rorem, Joan Tower, and George Tsontakis.

He was in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and was a visiting participant in Toni Morrison's Princeton University atelier. In addition to the Fulbright Fellowship, some of his recent awards include the ASCAP Morton Gould Prize, the Charles Ives Scholarship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant. He has lectured in music at Philadelphia Jewish Community Centers, and served as resident composer for the Singing City Choir’s outreach in Philadelphia schools, assisting approximately 150 children in composing and hearing their own songs.

While a Fulbright Fellow to China, he enjoyed a position as visiting scholar at the Music Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts. In such capacity, while residing in Beijing, he carried out research in Chinese music, including a field study in northern Yunnan. He has also collaborated with rock singer Wu Tong as pianist on Shandong Television, nationally broadcast.

In October, tenor Warren Mok and the Macau Orchestra premiered his 40-minute work, Unde Pendet Aeternitas, commissioned by the 19th annual Macau International Music Festival. Through March 2006, his piece Cloud Elements (written for Tang Junqiao and accompanying Meiling Hom's art installation) plays in the Smithsonian Museum's Sackler Gallery. In the spring of 2006, Jeffrey Khaner will premiere his flute sonata, and the two-continent premiere of his violin concerto will be presented in the United States and China. For more information about the composer, please visit his web site: www.elimarshall.org.

OLA GJEILO (Honourable Mention) Mr. Gjeilo's music has been performed in The United States, Canada, The UK, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, France, and Belgium. His publishers include Walton Music (US), Oxford University Press (UK) and Musikk-Huset (Norway). Gjeilo has been commissioned by Philip Brunelle, Ensemble Mendelssohn, Arielle Rodgers, Uranienborg Vokalensemble, Norsk Kirkesangforbund, Akademiska Damkören Lyran, Con Amore, and has written a song cycle, New England Songs, for American soprano Barbara Bonney.

Born in Norway in 1978, Gjeilo currently lives in New York, studying for a Master’s degree in composition at The Juilliard School. A composer and pianist, he has experience from both classical and jazz and is increasingly exploring the middle ground between these broad genres within his own tonal/modal language, having focused mainly on classical music for a while.

Gjeilo has studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Juilliard School, and completed his Bachelors Degree in Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. He is the recipient of the Gretchaninoff Memorial Prize and was one of the winners in the 2005 Juilliard Composers’ Orchestral Work Competition. The winning piece, The Identity Triad, was performed by the Juilliard Orchestra in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. More information about the composer may be found at his website: www.olagjeilo.com.

JOCELYN HAGEN (Honourable Mention), a native of Valley City, North Dakota, began piano lessons at the age of three, and began writing songs at the age of fourteen. She has written compositions in a variety of genres, including works for voice, piano, wind ensemble, orchestra, chorus, and chamber group. Jocelyn graduated Magna Cum Laude and with distinction from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, in May, 2003, with two bachelor of music degrees: vocal music education and theory and composition. So far in 2005, she has won three national composition competitions for her vocal writing: her song cycle, Songs of Fields and Prairies, was chosen as the winner for the San Francisco Song Festival Composition Competition (student division), her choral composition, Laus Trinitati, won the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composer Competition, and See Amid the Winter Snow for choir and cello won the VocalEssence Welcome Christmas! Carol Contest. She recently completed the composition program at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, studying under Philip Lasser from Juilliard, and finished her composer-in-the-schools residency through the American Composers Forum. Her work has been described as "deeply moving" and "dramatic" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As a performer, Jocelyn sings in The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists, under the direction of Matt Culloton, and is a pianist in the Linden Duo, with soprano Jennifer Kult. She is currently a fellow at the University of Minnesota, and studying composition privately under Minneapolis composer Mary Ellen Childs. She is also the President of Graphite Publishing. For more information about the composer, please visit her web site: www.jocelynhagen.com.