Danyew Wins 2008 Ithaca Composition Festival

Steve Danyew’s “Goodnight Goodnight” was named the Robert Campbell M.S. Endowed Choral Composition Prize Winner last weekend during the Ithaca College 2008 Choral Composition Festival.

Mr Danyew, who grew up in Newtown and has become an award-winning musician and composer, is in the midst of studying for his master’s in music at Eastman School of Music. Sponsored by the Ithaca College School of Music and the Theodore Presser Company, the competition is designed to encourage the creation and performance of new choral music.

The festival gives members of high school choirs the opportunity to attend rehearsals and workshops throughout the day. The composers of the final pieces each coach one of the choirs, and the winning composition is announced at the evening performance.

Six finalist composers from around the country were invited, and their compositions were all excellent, Mr Danyew said this week. The competition is actually open to any composer in the world, no age or origin restrictions, and they received over 200 entries. Mr Danyew spent the weekend in Ithaca, as did the other five composers: Rick Bartlett, Nancy Hill Cobb, Paul Goldstaub, Michael Philipsen and Benjamin Williams.

All the finalists are esteemed musicians, and three of the six are currently university professors in New York, Iowa, and Florida, said Mr Danyew.

“I was really not expecting to win, but it was quite an honor to say the least,” he said.

The group performing Mr Danyew’s piece was the Dorman High School Singers, from South Carolina.

“They arrived at 4 am the day that this all took place Saturday the 15th, so they were running on very little rest, but did an absolutely incredible job preparing my piece and performing it,” he said. “It was inspiring and moving to listen to them sing with such beauty and to know how much work they put into my music and how much they cared about it.  It was really incredible, and I’ll cherish it for years to come.

“Many of the students in the choir came up to me at various points in the day to thank me for writing [what they called] ‘such a beautiful piece,’” Mr Danyew continued. “I was just blown away with their maturity and how committed they were to this.”

Mr Danyew wrote the new work while he was home in Newtown this past summer. In September that work, “Goodnight, Goodnight,” was chosen as one of six national finalists for the competition at Ithaca.

In addition to the live performance and competition, all the finalist’s pieces are reviewed for possible publication by Presser Music.