New England Philharmonic Announces Winner of 2025 Call for Scores Competition
BOSTON — The New England Philharmonic is one of the few volunteer orchestras in the country with a Composer-in-Residence program and a Call for Scores competition, both initiated in 1985. For this year’s 40th annual Call for Scores, the NEP received more than 100 submissions from composers residing in 15 countries and 22 US states. After careful review of the submissions, Composer-in-Residence Eric Nathan, Music Director Tian Ng, and a committee of orchestra musicians selected Loren Loiacono’s composition Beanie's Chapbook as the winning work, which will be performed by the NEP in the 2025-26 season.
Loren Loiacono is a composer and pianist based in Syracuse, New York. An emerging orchestral voice, Loiacono has received commissions and performances from the Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Sacramento Philharmonic, Lexington Philharmonic, Brooklyn String Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. She frequently collaborates with the Albany Symphony, partnering with them to create new concerti for Sandbox Percussion (2022) and pianist Vicky Chow (2018), and served as their Mellon Composer-Educator-in-Residence from 2017 to 2018. Recent residencies include tenures at Millay Center for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Avaloch Farm Music Institute. She has also been a fellow at Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Festival. Loiacono served as Executive Director of the MATA Festival from 2019 to 2021, and is a co-founder of Kettle Corn New Music. She currently serves on faculty at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music.
Loicano writes about her composition:
“Beanie’s Chapbook is a collection of miniature tone-poems, inspired by the long tradition of self-published chapbooks. With a history dating back to the 16th century, chapbooks are short collections of poems, songs, nursery rhymes, religious tracts and other forms of folk and popular literature. While their origins are humble, the tradition persists today as a realm for poets and artists to collect, share, and experiment with ideas.
The “poems” in Beanie’s Chapbook are not meant to be the ones I might write, but those that I imagine would be written by my very small, very anxious, very loud cat, Beanie. The first movement, “Beanie and Mirror Cat,” depicts Beanie’s nightly romp with the mysterious cat who appears in the bedroom mirror. The second movement, “A Lullaby for Puffies,” is Beanie’s song for her collection of small stuffed toys (her “puffies”), which she lovingly cradles and bathes as if they’re her own kittens.The final movement, “Outside Friends with Very Long Ears,” depicts Beanie’s daily staring contest with the rabbits outside our dining room window, and her constant struggle to decide if they’re food, foes, or friends.”
The NEP is also pleased to announce this year’s Call for Scores finalists — Juhi Bansal (To Call the Rain) and Tommy Dougherty (Restrung).