With applicants coming from dozens of countries on five different continents, the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival already has attracted significant international attention in its first three years.

The composers from abroad who have been selected to participate clearly have influenced the Festival’s musical direction. They also have helped to spread the word about the event much farther and faster than originally anticipated. In a nod to these welcome developments, the event now will be known as the Mizzou International Composers Festival, effective immediately.

Though the name has changed, the format will remain essentially the same. The 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival will take place from Monday, July 22 through Saturday, July 27. It will be a week of activities and concerts, ending with a grand finale featuring world premieres of new works written by eight resident composers.

The new name simply reflects the experiences of the event’s first three years, said William Lackey, managing director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative. “The international composers who have visited Columbia over the past three years have made exciting and substantive contributions to the event. We are increasing our efforts to attract even more resident composer applicants from outside the US,’ he said.

“Calling it a ‘composers festival’ places further emphasis on the vision of the New Music Initiative and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation: to spotlight the work of the eight emerging resident composers and celebrate the careers of two veteran guest composers,” Lackey added. “This is one of our signature events in the ongoing effort to make Columbia a center for composers, and we wanted the new name to make that clear.”