John Nydam '15 Wins International Competition

John Nydam ’15 has been chosen as one of six international winners of this year's MATA Jr. composition competition. As a winner, Nydam has been asked to complete a new composition which will be premiered at two concerts at New York City's DiMenna Center for Classical Music on November 17 and 18.

MATA, led by Philip Glass who co-founded it in 1996, is an organization that commissions, presents, and supports music from top emerging composers under 40. The MATA Jr. competition is their annual international competition for pre-college age composers.

“I am really honored to be one of the winning composers,” said Nydam. “I found out last spring that I had been selected, based on an original piece I submitted. I began composing the new piece this summer, entitled ‘Swells for Quartet.’ It is a musical study of the relationship between acoustic music and live electronics. The quartet is a mixed ensemble consisting of oboe, clarinet, trumpet, and cello, with the addition of live electronics.”

The piece will be premiered by members of Face The Music Orchestra, which only performs works by living composers. Nydam will be paired with an established emerging composer during the rehearsals and performances.

“I will sit in on the last couple of rehearsals, so I will have an opportunity to provide some last minute input on how they are interpreting the piece,” said Nydam. “However I will not have the opportunity to make a lot of changes since they started rehearsing my piece in early September.”

This is not the first composition award Nydam has received. Last summer, he won the Oklahoma City University Bass School of Music’s national high school composition competition for an electronic piece, entitled “7604319145.” It premiered last spring at a concert in Oklahoma City which Nydam attended.

A talented pianist, Nydam was selected this summer to the All-National Jazz Ensemble as the lone pianist from a nationwide pool of candidates. He will travel to Nashville for a week in October where he will join the ensemble to rehearse before performing on October 29 at the historic Grand Ole Opry House.

As a member of the gold-medal winning Select 1A Combo and Big Band, Nydam earned individual recognition last year in the form of an Outstanding Musicianship award at the MAJE All-State competition, a Superior Musicianship award at the Berklee Jazz Festival, and an Outstanding Soloist award from the Charles Mingus High School Jazz Competition.
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