The New York Philharmonic recently announced a $10 million donation to support new music. The gift allows the New York Philharmonic to award a $250,000 grant every two years to a working composer.  The Cereal List has obtained a partial draft of the guidelines for this grant:

HOW TO APPLY:

Please send a completed application form along with work samples to the address below.  Applications will be accepted via FedEx only.  Applications delivered via USPS or UPS will not be accepted as these institutions are not sponsors of the NY Philharmonic.

There is a $250 application fee which will be refunded if and only if your application is awarded.  An additional donation to the NY Philharmonic is strongly encouraged but not required.

WORK SAMPLES:

Composers should submit one “Fanfare”-style work and one “Encore”-style work.  All submitted works must be completed final drafts and MUST NOT HAVE BEEN PERFORMED in public.  A recording of the submitted works is required, but it must be a private recording (as per previous sentence).

IF AWARDED:

Should your submission be accepted, the Artistic Advisory Board of the NY Philharmonic reserves the right to stipulate any number of changes to your composition before it is commissioned by the NY Philharmonic.  You will also be required to meet with each musician in the orchestra (at their convenience and at your expense) for advice on how to better extract individual players’ parts from your score and to consider any compositional changes they request.  If a musician requests a compositional change that conflicts with the Artistic Advisory Board’s stipulations, you must report the musician’s requested change to the Artistic Advisory Board before proceeding.

Apart from the changes requested and stipulated by the musicians and Artistic Advisory Board, there should be no difference between the work sample submitted and the commissioned composition.