ASYO YOUNG CREATORS

How the Project Works

• Three student composers will be selected as Young Creators melody winners.
• Each winning melody will be orchestrated for full orchestra by Dr. Roger Zare for the ASYO Concert Orchestra as a separate short orchestral work.
• Each of the three orchestrated compositions will be shared with art classrooms and WNC Dance Academy to serve as inspiration.
• Three student works of art will be selected as Young Creators art winners, with one winning artwork paired with each winning composition.
• WNC Dance Academy students will choreograph dances to each winning composition.
• The three compositions and their corresponding artwork and dances will come together in the final performance.

Melody Submission

Elementary school students in grades 2–5 are invited to participate individually, collaboratively, or as a classroom project. Three winning melodies will be selected.

Students will create an original melody that:

• Fits on one page
• Is 20–30 seconds long
• Includes a title
• Includes a tempo marking
• Is submitted as a PDF
• Represents the students’ own original musical ideas

The melody does not need to include lyrics, accompaniment, or be a complete song. Students are sharing a musical idea, not a professionally finished composition.

Creative Reflection

Include 1–3 sentences describing the inspiration behind the melody. Students might share:

• What inspired their melody
• A feeling, idea, story, person, place, or experience behind the music
• What they wanted the listener to imagine or feel

The reflection may be written individually, collaboratively, or as a class. Teachers may assist younger students with recording or transcribing their ideas.

Submission: YoungCreators@ashevillesymphony.org
Deadline: Friday, November 13, 2026

Visual Art Submission

Once the selected melodies have been recorded, recordings will be shared with participating elementary visual art classrooms. Students will create original artwork inspired by the music.

Recordings will be delivered to participating classrooms by January 2027 via Google Drive.

Students may participate individually, collaboratively, or as a classroom project.

Artwork Requirements

Artwork must:

• Be 9 × 12 inches
• Be created on a flat surface
• Be original student work
• Be inspired by one of the selected Young Creators compositions
• Contain no words, letters, or numbers
• Be suitable for photographing, digitizing, and projecting

Students may respond to the music literally, abstractly, or imaginatively. The artwork does not need to illustrate the music literally.

Creative Reflection

Include 1–3 sentences describing how the music inspired the artwork. Students might explain:

• What they heard in the music
• What the music made them feel, imagine, or visualize
• What artistic choices they made in response to the music

The reflection may be completed individually, collaboratively, or as a class.

Submission: YoungCreators@ashevillesymphony.org
Artwork Deadline: Friday, April 2, 2027

Dance Collaboration

Recordings of the selected compositions will also be shared with WNC Dance, where students and instructors will develop choreography inspired by the same musical material.

Final Performance

The project culminates in the ASYO Spring Concert on May 3, 2027, at Asheville High School’s Auditorium.

The performance will bring all three creative components together:

Student Composers → ASYO Concert Orchestra → Student Visual Art + Dance

• Concert Orchestra performs the professionally orchestrated student compositions.
• WNC Dance students perform choreography inspired by the music.
• All submitted artwork will be displayed before the performance.
• Each student composer is recognized during the concert.
• Winning artwork will be featured in the ASYO Spring Concert program.
• Student composers and student artists will each receive a custom-made score featuring the student artwork printed on the cover.

Meet the Orchestrator

Roger Zare has been praised for his “enviable grasp of orchestration” (New York Times) and for writing music with “formal clarity and an alluringly mercurial surface.” He was born in Sarasota, FL, and has written for a wide variety of ensembles, from solo instruments to full orchestra. Often inspired by science, mathematics, literature, and mythology, his colorfully descriptive and energetic works have been performed on six continents by such ensembles as the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Sarasota Orchestra, the Australian-based Trio Anima Mundi, the Donald Sinta Quartet, and the New York Youth Symphony. An award winning composer, Zare has received the ASCAP Nissim Prize, three BMI Student Composer Awards, an ASCAP Morton Gould award, a New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, the 2008 American Composers Orchestra Underwood Commission, a 2010 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Copland House Residency Award, Grand Prize in the inaugural China-US Emerging Composers Competition, and many other honors. An active pianist, Zare performed his chamber work, Geometries, with Cho-Liang Lin, Jian Wang, and Burt Hara at the 2014 Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival. He has been the 2023 FRA guest composer at Fermilab and composer-in-residence with the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, the Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington and the SONAR new music ensemble. Zare’s collections of concert etudes for solo clarinet and bass clarinet are paired with written masterclasses by clarinetist Andy Hudson in Elements of Contemporary Clarinet Technique and SPACE BASS, both published by Conway Publications and distributed around the world.

Zare holds a DMA (’12) from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty, Paul Schoenfield, Bright Sheng, and Kristin Kuster. He holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory (MM ’09) and the University of Southern California (BM ’07), and his previous teachers include Christopher Theofanidis, Derek Bermel, David Smooke, Donald Crockett, Tamar Diesendruck, Fredrick Lesemann, and Morten Lauridsen. Zare currently serves as assistant professor of music at Appalachian State University and previously taught composition at Illinois State University.

Composing Our Tomorrow

This project is part of the League of American Orchestra’s Composing Our Tomorrow project.

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