Mizzou assistant professor Carolina Heredia has won a commission for 2020 from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition.

Heredia was one of 15 composers selected from among 286 applications this year to the Endowment’s General and LDS commissioning programs, which will award grants totaling $83,000 to the winners.

The Barlow Endowment was established in September 1983 through a gift from Milton A. and Gloria Barlow to Brigham Young University for the purpose of “engendering and supporting excellence in musical composition through the university and the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications.”

The Endowment hosts an international composition competition every year, receiving applications from across the globe. The application are reviewed by a panel of musicians, who select the winners that will be commissioned to compose new works during the next year.

Heredia will use her grant to write a new work for Duo Axis, featuring flutist Zach Sheets and pianist Wei-Han Wu.

Several other composers with Mizzou connections also won commissions this year from the Barlow Endowment, notably composition alumnus Robert Strobel, who earned his master’s degree at MU in 2014 and will write a piece for Playground Ensemble. Other 2020 winners included Peter Shin, a resident composer at the 2019 Mizzou International Composers Festival; Carl Schimmel, who was a special guest at the 2015 MICF; and Annika Socolofsky, who visited Mizzou for a residency last year.

The judging panel included Chen Yi, Neil Thornock, Dorothy Chang, Ben Sabey, and Benjamin Taylor of the Endowment’s Board of Advisors, plus guest judges Stephen Jones, Miguel Chuaqui, Dan Lippel, and Steve Roens.