Iron Composer is an instant composition contest. Five composers are selected from around the country to compete in a daylong event. At 9 am, they are given an instrumentation and a musical ingredient. They have just five hours to finish a piece of music, which is immediately rehearsed and judged at a free public concert.

Now in its third year, Iron Composer was created for the ARTSaha! festival in a partnership between ANALOG <i>arts</i> and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The 2009 competition will take place in suburban Cleveland with the institutional support of Baldwin-Wallace College. It will also be broadcast live by Cleveland’s classical radio station WCLV. Mark Satola of the Not the Dead White Composer’s Hour will emcee.

The five finalists who will compete are Andrew Jamieson (IL), Travis Jeffords (IN), Sunny Knable (NY), Wei-Chieh Lin (NY), & John Rot (OH). For more information on the finalists and the competition, visit ironcomposer.org.