Commissions
Giving Young Female Composers Their Start
Every year, the Southeastern Women in Music Symposium uses its proceeds from ticket sales to commission a piece from a young female artist. The goal of this project is to give young women their first commission, and give them a platform for their pieces to be heard.
2024 commission premiered in 2025
Claire Brown
Claire Brown (b. 2006) is a composer and oboist from Northern Virginia and currently based in State College, Pennsylvania. Her original compositions include works for soloists, chamber ensemble, large ensemble, and electronic media. Her most recent compositions span a wide variety of genres and instrumentation, including A Thousand Paper Cranes (Wind Ensemble), Proceed With Caution (Woodwind Trio), and Destination (Horn Duet). Her compositional style is influenced by various genres and styles, from merengue and fugues to more modern contemporary works, pushing boundaries in the world of new music. Her pieces have been selected for various competitions, including a solo cello etude for Vox Novus 15 Minutes of Fame Featuring Eunice Koh, and a wind ensemble piece, A Thousand Paper Cranes, for the Wind Ensemble category of the 2024 Penn State Ensemble Call for Scores. A Thousand Paper Cranes will be premiered in Eisenhower Auditorium at Penn State University by the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Tonya Mitchell-Spradlin in Fall 2025. Claire is now working on a band commission for the Southeastern Women in Music Symposium that will also be premiered December 2025. Currently, Claire is attending Penn State, where she studies oboe with Dr. Andreas Oeste and composition with Dr. Baljinder Sekhon.
2023 commission premiered in 2024
Dayla Spencer
Dayla D. Spencer (b. 2005) is a composer, arranger, and trombonist from Nashville, TN. She has had her original works performed by ensembles all over the country such as the University of North Carolina-Greensboro TubaBand, the Paper Clips Trombone Quartet, the Las Vegas Youth Saxophone Ensembles, and the University of Oklahoma Trombone Choir. Her works have been invited to be performed at various conferences and festivals from around the country including the 2024 International Trombone Festival and SERTEC, a regional conference of the International Tuba Euphonium Conference (ITEC). She is an Interlochen Arts alum (IAC Composition, ‘23), where she was recognized as a Fromm Foundation Fellow. Spencer currently majors in Theory & Composition at the Montclair State University John Cali School of Music, where she studies privately with composer Patrick J. Burns. She is an alum of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra’s Accelerando Pathways program, where she studied privately with composer Cristina Spinei and trombonist Nick Laufer.
2022 Commission premiered in 2023
Ash Knox
Ashley Knox (b. 1999) is a composer based in Roanoke, VA. She has been composing since 2016, having found her love for making music by discovering how fun it was to actually create the music that was in her head. She has been in the world of music since the age of 8. She began by learning the piano from her mother. She transitioned to the alto saxophone at age 10 then eventually the oboe, which became her main instrument for college. She went to college at West Virginia University, graduating in the year of 2021 with a Bachelor's degree in Music Composition. During her years in college, she participated in numerous ensembles in order to gain experience for her compositions, including concert bands, orchestras, an oboe trio, steel drum bands, and marching bands. She was also an active member of SCI (Society of Composers, Inc). After graduating, she moved to Virginia and now performs in many local ensembles with her oboe while writing music and making art everyday.