Arts Council Sponsors Electronic Music Contest

The second International Electronic Music Composition competition was announced last month throughout the world in a brochure in seven languages, prepared by the Dartmouth College Department of Music.

Competing for a $500 Dartmouth Arts Council prize last spring in the first such competition, hundreds of entrants sent their tapes to be judged at a two-day festival at Dartmouth College. "The response was not only overwhelming in numbers of entries received," said Prof. Jon Appleton, director of Dartmouth's Electronic Music Studio, "but the quality was of an exceptionally high level."

A recording of the winning works will be released to the public soon after the New Year by Vox Productions, Inc. The judges in 1968 were Milton Babbitt, George Balch Wilson, and Vladimir Ussachevsky. Four more composer-judges of international rank will be at Dartmouth for the next competition, April 3-5, 1969. They are Lars-Gunnar Bodin, a composer on the staff of the Swedish Radio in Stockholm; Charles Dodge, a composer-in-residence at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and a member of the Columbia University Music Department; Kenneth Gaburo, composer-in-residence at the University of California at San Diego and recent Guggenheim winner; and Pril Smiley, a composer on the staff of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music center in New York. Miss Smiley was a finalist in last year's competition.

Top award will again be the $500 Dartmouth Council Prize, and all entries must be in the hands of Professor Appleton no later than March 15, 1969.