2nd Story Initiative – Call for Scores

Unheard-of Ensemble presents our Second Story Initiative, a call for works that have received an initial premiere but deserve a new life. After years of commissioning and performing our own repertoire, we have found a large body of work written recently that individual composers want to expand upon, revise, or further develop. After the premiere, many compelling works sit idle. This call for works aims to re-energize these works and provide the composers the opportunity and time needed to give their compositions a second performance and second story.

The call will be open to works by United States-based composers written for clarinet, violin, cello, piano instrumentation (with the optional use of electronics), as well as any duo or trio subset. The call is open for works from other instrumentations that could be adapted. The work must have been written in the past twenty years, have received a premiere or series of initial performances, but have not been performed recently (within the past year). To apply, submit a work, work history (who it was written for, original instrumentation, performance history) and a short description of what you would want to change, adapt, rearrange, etc. This could be anything from changing instrumentation or adding electronics to wanting to create a compact version of a fifteen minute work that works better structurally.

The ensemble will select works from three composers to workshop and perform, with these composers being invited as in-person guests for the revised premieres on Unheard-of's Dialogues series performances in NYC in 2025. Selected composers will receive edited audio and multicam video recording and workshop time with the ensemble. The three composers will each receive a $1000 prize and be invited to workshop and attend the performance.

Partial funding of this project was made possible thanks to funding from the Amphion Foundation.