UCSC graduate student in music Noah Gideon Meites is one of nine young classical composers who have been named winners in the 57th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards.
The BMI Student Composer Awards recognize superior creative talent, and winners receive scholarship grants to be applied toward their musical education.
The recipients were selected from more than 500 manuscripts submitted to the competition from throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Many of the most prominent classical composers in the world today received their first recognition from the BMI Student Composer Awards, and 11 former winners have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
"I was totally surprised when I got the call," said the 26-year-old Meites, a doctoral of musical arts candidate at UCSC. "The award is validation for what I'm doing--that it's of value to people. It's inspiring."
Meites received his award for a composition titled Bioskop, for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion.
His BMI award-winning work was recently premiered by the New Music Works ensemble under the direction of Phillip Collins at UCSC's 2009 "April in Santa Cruz Contemporary Music Festival."
Meites said the title of his composition comes from the name of one of the first film projectors invented in 1895 by German filmmaker Max Skladanowsky. "The piece was inspired by several of his short silent films," he noted.
In addition to working as a composer, Meites has also been active as a trumpet player and improviser. While studying in France, he founded an electro-jazz ensemble that performed in Poitiers and Paris.
In collaboration with Elvis Perkins, Meites has also performed on such stages as the David Letterman Show, Chicago's Lollapolooza Festival, and several venues in New York City.
But Meites said he is now completely focused on the art of composition.
"Before I came to UC Santa Cruz, I thought that studying composition would just be an interesting thing to do," said Meites. "Now I feel like a composer, and I feel that the UCSC Music Department and faculty members have made that possible."
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