“For the Fallen” was selected as one of three finalists from over 160 worldwide entries to the 2007 Adagio Composition Contest.

About the Piece

”For the Fallen” is a tribute to those who have lost ther lives in the war in Iraq.

About the Composer

Andrew Lowe Watson was born in London in 1958. He studied piano and composition at Trinity College of
Music, London and Trinity College Cambridge where his tutors were Hugh Wood, Robin Holloway and Richard Marlow. As a student he won the University Chamber Choir Composition Prize and his setting of Hopkins’ ‘The Windhover’ was heard on the Backs by 3,000 people.

He has written 8 musicals for the Grimm Festival in Germany which have also played in Japan. He collaborated with the author Catherine Storr on an opera of her children’s classic novel ‘Marianne Dreams’, performed in London in 2004 and wrote commissions for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005.

“Reveries” was selected as one of three finalists from over 160 worldwide entries to the 2007 Adagio Composition Contest.

About the Composer

Composer David P. Sartor (rhymes with “Carter”) received his education at the Blair School of Music, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory, and the University of Tennessee, where he studied with John Anthony Lennon and David Van Vactor. The recipient of commissions from a variety of ensembles, his works are performed nationally and internationally and have been featured at the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals, the International Double Bass Festival, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the International Music Festival in San Jose Costa Rica, The World’s Largest Organ Concert, and at Carnegie Hall, with broadcast performances on National Public Radio and local affiliates.

Sartor has received awards from the American Bandmasters Association, New Music for Young Ensembles, Meet The Composer, and ASCAP, among others. As Guest Composer, Conductor and Lecturer he has completed residencies at venues including the Washington (D.C.) National Cathedral, Illinois State University, and California State University Bakersfield, sponsored by New York City’s Meet The Composer Foundation. His works are recorded on the ERM Media label and are published by E.C. Schirmer, Shawnee Press, TRN Music, and Metamorphic Music.

“Gridley Paige Road” was selected as the grand prize winner from over 160 worldwide entries to the 2007 Adagio Composition Contest.

About the piece

“This piece was inspired in part by memories of my childhood years living on Gridley Paige Road, a rural road set amid farmland, woods and fields in central New York state. Originally composed for string quartet, this movement was premiered by the Avalon Quartet in Merkin Concert Hall, New York, in May of 2003. In 2005, three more movements were added and Gridley Paige Road became the first movement of my String Quartet No. 1. The full quartet was premiered in Merkin Concert Hall by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in April of 2005. This movement was then orchestrated for string orchestra in March 2007.”

About the composer

The music of composer-pianist Matthew Quayle (BMI) spans a wide range of styles and genres, from concert orchestral works to musical theater comedy. His music has been performed by eighth blackbird, Alarm Will Sound, the Southeastern Trio, the Avalon String Quartet and the Arditti String Quartet. Quayle has also received commissions from the Almeida Theatre in London, the New London Children’s Choir, and flautist Claire Chase with the International Contemporary Ensemble.

In 2006 his Sun Dance, commissioned by saxophonist Gail Levinsky, was performed at the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Conventions at Penn State University and UNC Greensboro. He composed the introduction to the ‘Round Midnight Variations, a collection of variations by prominent contemporary composers on the Thelonius Monk theme; this work was premiered by pianist Emanuele Arciuli at New York’s Miller Theater in 2002. Quayle frequently performs as a piano soloist and chamber musician. Recent collaborations have included recitals with clarinetist Deborah Andrus and cellist Jameson Platte. In 1998 he performed his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, as winner of the Oberlin Conservatory Concerto Competition.

Quayle is a doctoral candidate at New York University (GSAS) and holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Cincinnati. He has been on the faculty at New England Music Camp in Sidney, Maine since 2002. From 2005 to 2006 he was a keyboardist and songwriter for the pop-rock sextet If I Told Napoleon. A native of Waterville, New York, he has recently moved from New York City to North Carolina, where he is Lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Find out more about our search for the next great sad string orchestra piece.

Performed by The Fauxharmonic Orchestra,
Conducted by Paul Henry Smith

“Man, this is absolutely dynamite!

You have done a fantastic job of capturing all of the nuance of the piece - the variety of the percussion, the string divisi, the mutes - all of it is here. I can’t imagine how many hours of work went into this. I just want to congratulate you on your frighteningly accurate representation of the piece.”

– David Heuser
Associate Professor of Composition at University of Texas San Antonio,
Winner of the 2006 Fauxharmonic Orchestra Composition Contest.

About the winning composition

Listen to the Fauxharmonic Orchestra performance: A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

“A Screaming Comes Across the Sky” was commissioned by the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival for its “New Texas Overtures” season in 2005. The title of the piece is the first sentence from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow. The piece was premiered in 2005. One reviewer of that performance wrote:

David Heuser’s ‘A Screaming Comes Across the Sky’ was a shot-in-the-arm beginning. … Heuser’s music certainly matched the title through its intense, driving rhythms and thunderclap-loud outbursts. This was all-American music at its most dynamic and visceral. Yet the piece by the University of Texas-San Antonio composer was well-crafted and smartly orchestrated … The music continually engaged mind and body as it careened along.

— Houston Chronicle (July 2005)

About the composer

David Heuser is associate professor of theory, composition, and electronic music at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Heuser’s music has been performed by various groups and individuals and on festivals and conferences throughout the US and abroad. He has won a variety of awards, grants and commissions including an ASCAP Young Composer Award, many ASCAP Standard Grants, a First Music commission from the New York Youth Symphony, an Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival “New Texas Overture” Commission, and the Delius Composition Contest Chamber Music Award.

More about David Heuser

Honorable Mentions

The following outstanding compositions were selected by the judges for hornorable mention:

About the contest

The Fauxharmonic Orchestra’s international composition contest was established in 2005 to help foster new orchestral composition, and to showcase digital orchestral performance. The contest winner receives a $1,200 prize and a recorded performance by the Fauxharmonic Orchestra.

This year’s contest involved eighty-six entries by composers from the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada. Judges for the 2006 contest were:

Emily Doolittle, composer (bio)

Markand Thakar, Music Director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra; Co-director of the graduate program in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Conservatory of Music (bio)

Herb Tucmandl, CEO and Founder, Vienna Symphonic Library, the world’s pre-eminent maker of digital orchestral instruments and performance systems (bio)

Paul Henry Smith, Music Director of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra, a digital orchestra ensemble devoted to producing recordings of orchestral music, new and old, of the highest artistic caliber.