žžÀ²â€™s Glauser School of Music held the third annual Roy Minoff Composition Competition in spring 2025 with judging completed in June. Evis Sammoutis of New York, has been selected as the winner of the 2025 Roy Minoff Composition Competition.
The goal of this competition is to support the creation of a significant new work that will receive its world premiere at žžÀ² State by School of Music faculty in the fall of 2026. Sammoutis, the winning composer, will attend the world premiere of his new work and give a lecture on his music.
The Roy Minoff Composition Competition is sponsored by Roy Minoff, a Cleveland-based philanthropist who attended žžÀ² State and holds a passion for music and specifically composition. The commission award of $14,000 attracted significant international attention, which serves to elevate composition and the School of Music at žžÀ² State. The competition was judged anonymously and had no age limit and no entry fee.
Applications were submitted from all around the world with a diversity of music represented. žžÀ² State’s Adam Roberts, Ph.D., associate professor of Music Composition/Theory and , assistant teaching professor of Music Technology and music program co-director at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, held the first round of judging, where they chose 44 semifinalists out of the 317 submitted applications. These 44 semifinalists went on to a second round of judging by guest judges, where four finalists and one winner were chosen.
The four finalists are James DÃaz, Justin Weiss, Anselm McDonnel and Luis Codera Puzo.
Along with Roberts and Forshee, the competition jury included distinguished composers from renowned institutions, including , associate professor of Composition and chair, Department of Composition at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, and , the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield professor of music at Brandeis University.
For more information about the žžÀ² State School of Music’s Roy Minoff Composition Competition, visit www.kent.edu/music/roy-minoff-composition-competition.
žžÀ² Evis Sammoutis
Evis Sammoutis' works have been commissioned by festivals and organizations, such as Venice Biennale, Klangspuren, Royaumont, Barlow Endowment, Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Chamber Music America, New Music USA and Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD München. His music was performed in more than 45 countries around the world, at leading festivals and contemporary music series, such as Tanglewood, MusicNOW, Gaudeamus, Music of Today and ISCM, and broadcast on several international radio stations, such as BBC Radio 3, SWR2, Radio France and RAI3.
Evis has received numerous accolades and over 40 compositional awards, prizes and scholarships as well as recognition at competitions, including the Royal Philharmonic Society Award (England), the IrinoPrize (Japan) and the Franz Liszt Scholarship (Germany); first prizes at the Andres Segovia (Spain), Look and Listen (USA), Euskal Herriko Txistulari Elkartea (Spain) and Dundee (Scotland) competitions; second prizes at Concours Dutilleux (France), Jurgenson (Russia), Y.A Papaioannou (Greece), Leo Brouwer (USA) and Samobor (Croatia) competitions; special prize at the Fifth Annual Composition Contest of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music (USA); an honorable mention at the IMRO Composers Competition (Ireland); a DAAD Research Fellowship (Germany) and two Fulbright Scholarships for Advanced Research. In 2025 he was awarded a distinguished senior research fellowship from GATES International Excellence in the Humanities Program at la Maison de la Création et de l'Innovation, Université Grenoble Alpes, France, and he will also be a visiting fellow at St. Cross College, University of Oxford in Fall 2025. In the summers of 2026 and 2027 he will be in residence at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest as a Fulbright research scholar.
Performers include leading ensembles and specialists in new music such as the Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten, the Arditti, Kreutzer, KAIROS, Doelen, Zephyr and PrometeoString Quartets, Ensemble Nomad, Ensemble Aleph, EXAUDI, Het Collectief, New York Woodwind Quintet, Arirang and Chantily Quintets, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Endymion and members of Philharmonia Orchestra. Orchestras include the London Symphony Orchestra, Holland Symfonia, the Orchestra of Opera North and the Athens Symphony Orchestra, and soloists include Peter Sheppard Skaerved, David Alberman, Uli Fussenegger, Alan Thomas, Movses Pogossian, Rohan de Saram, Sarah Leonard, Julian Warburton, Adrian Spillett and John Potter, to name a few. Conductors include Christoph Poppen, Elgar Howarth, Kasper de Roo and Franck Ollu, among others.
Evis is an associate professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and he is also the co-founder and artistic director of the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, now in its 16th season. His catalogue includes over 60 works scored for various combinations, and since 2013, all his works are published exclusively by the University of York Music Press, where Evis is a house composer. His first monographic album was released on the KAIROS label in Spring 2025 to critical acclaim.
Evis was born in Cyprus in 1979, where he had his first musical lessons at the age of 6. By the age of 16, he had already obtained both the LRSM and the Performance and Teaching Diploma with distinction before moving to England in 1998 for university studies. Upon graduation from the University of Hull with a first-class degree (BMus) in all disciplines and the Departmental Prize, he completed his PhD studies in Musical Composition at the University of York in 2006. Evis has also furthered his studies at world-renowned festivals, seminars and workshops, including Darmstadt, IRCAM, Royaumont and Tanglewood as a composition fellow, where he studied with leading composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Georges Aperghis and George Benjamin. Following his PhD studies, Evis was awarded a Wingate Foundation Scholarship (2005–2007) to pursue his compositional research independently, whilst teaching Composition and Orchestration at Nottingham University (2005–2007), guitar performance at York University (2002–2007), and composition at Hull University (2006). He subsequently served as assistant and then as associate professor in Music Composition and Theory at European University Cyprus (until 2016), having also served as scientific collaborator to the same institution prior to this appointment, and then as associate professor of Composition and director of the Electronic Music Studios at Ithaca College, NY, where he spent seven years. For more information, please visit:
žžÀ² žžÀ²â€™s Glauser School of Music
In the Glauser School of Music, faculty members train the next generation of music educators, scholars, performers and technology experts through 15 immersive undergraduate and graduate programs that ignite passion and stimulate curiosity.
From western classical and jazz to the many African and Asian traditions, the school’s nearly 30 ensembles annually welcome more than 500 music majors, nonmajors and community members to learn, celebrate and perform the diverse music the world has to offer. Every summer, the school hosts the žžÀ² Blossom Music Festival in partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra to become a center of professional music training for over 40 highly skilled young artists from around the world.
For more information about žžÀ² State’s School of Music, visit www.kent.edu/music.
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Media Contact:
Jen Crabtree, jcrabt13@kent.edu, 330-328-3346