The University of Missouri School of Music is pleased to announce that Patrick David Clark (pictured) is the winner of the 2011 Sinquefield Composition Prize. Clark, a graduate student studying orchestral conducting, submitted his orchestral composition “Glancing Blade” to the competition and was selected for the prize by a panel of independent judges.

The adjudicators for the 2011 competition were Mara Gibson, director of the Community Music and Dance Academy in Kansas City and a member of the composition faculty at the UMKC Conservatory of Music; Eric Honour, professor of music at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg; and Forrest Pierce, assistant professor of music composition at the University of Kansas.

As winner of the 2011 Sinquefield Composition Prize, Clark now will have the opportunity to write an original work for one of Mizzou’s premier large ensembles, which will receive its world premiere on Monday, March 14, 2011 at the Chancellor’s Concert in Columbia. With the commission, he also receives a cash prize for the production of the score and parts and will have his work recorded.

Born in 1967, Patrick David Clark currently is currently working on a Masters degree in orchestral conducting at Mizzou, where he is studying with Edward Dolbashian. He also holds a Bachelors degree in composition from MU, which he earned studying with Dr. Thomas McKenney. Clark earned a DMA in composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, studying with Arthur Gottschalk and Richard Lavenda. He became a Tanglewood Fellow in 1998, and from 1999 to 2001 studied with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague on a Netherlands-America Foundation Grant. Clark also has worked as a composer; as a writer for Andante.com; and as a teacher in the Netherlands, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, NM.

The other finalists for the 2011 Sinquefield Composition Prize were Michael Anderson, Grant Fonda, and David Witter. Please join us in congratulating all four composers on this notable achievement!