The University of Missouri School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative are pleased to announce that David Witter is the winner of the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize. Witter, who holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from Mizzou, submitted his piece “Garden Music” to the competition and was selected for the prize by a panel of independent judges.

The adjudicators for the 2013 competition were:
* Mara Gibson, director of the Community Music and Dance Academy and a member of the composition faculty at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance in Kansas City;
* Eric Honour, professor of music at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, MO; and
* Ingrid Stölzel, an instructor at Park University, composer with newEar contemporary chamber ensemble, and program manager for the Youth Symphony of Kansas City.

As winner of the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize, Witter now will have the opportunity to write an original work for Mizzou’s University Philharmonic, which will receive its world premiere on Monday, March 11, 2013 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.

David Witter, born in 1978, is a composer, trombonist, improvisor, and educator originally from Holts Summit, MO. Now living in Columbia, he holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the University of Missouri, where he studied with W. Thomas McKenney and Stefan Freund. Witter (pictured) also was a finalist for the 2012 Sinquefield Composition Prize for his piece “Water Music”.

Witter’s compositions have been performed by the Mizzou New Music Ensemble at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden, and he has led performances of the MU Creative Improvisation Ensemble at conferences in Ann Arbor, MI and Paterson, NJ. Witter is a member of the Gamma Gamma chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda, and currently is pursuing a Missouri teaching certification for K-12, after which he will teach elementary and middle school music.

The other finalists for the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize were Justin Pounds and Joseph Hills.