Accepting Youth Compositions Enter by 2/14/25 for Contest

Oct 13

The competition announcement is a little late this year, but in our 12th year, we are continuing the tradition.

Composition Competition - enter on this website. We except all styles of instrumental music with any instrumentation. However, this is not a songwriters competition (anymore). The competition is for students from ages 10 through 18/19 (still in high school). The students are divided into three even age levels for judging and prizes. We try to give constructive feedback for each entry from two judges.

Art is very hard to judge, and an entry may be perfect, but not as creative as another entry. We do the best we can to create a fair contest. The judges and I, the administrator Becky Chaffee, are volunteers. When I started the competition, I had hoped that it would call attention to the wonderful music art, books and products on this website, all created by myself. But in 11 years, it hasn’t. I almost discontinued the competition this year, and this announcement is much later than it has been in the past. Usually by now, I get a letter from a student asking me where the competition is posted. So now it is posted. (I am still waiting to hear back from all the judges, so the 2025 judge line up is not yet finalized. The judges from last year are still on the sign-up page at the time of this writing.)

The cost of having a commerce website has gone up every year, costing me many hundreds of dollars. Instead of closing my website and the competition, I decided to try raising the competition price to help pay for the website this year. It still doesn’t pay for my time. Last year, with 40 entrants from all over the world, it was a fantastic competition, but it was also unbelievably time consuming for me for many many reasons. I surveyed most of the entrants last year if a jump in price would bother them, and a large number said no because this is the competition with the best feedback. It is worth it.

So I am still not paying myself for my time, but trying to compensate for the high website cost this year. I enjoy helping gifted students. As my own children were gifted and all we ran into locally was twisted corrupt politics in the youth music program. So, this competition does not have that problem. I am sorry to say that one of our fine supporters who donated gift certificates every year and carried my books in his store, Lee Newcomer from Performers Music, passed away this year. I visited him and made a purchase in his shop whenever I visited Chicago.

Sincerely,

Becky Chaffee