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The 2025 American Accordionists’ Association (AAA) Annual Elsie M. Bennett Contemporary Accordion Composition Contest
Information, Awards, Regulations and Entry Form at: 2025Bennett.pdfThe American Accordionists' Association (AAA) cordially invites all interested composers to participate in the 2025 Elsie M. Bennett Accordion Composition Competition. Contribute to the growth of contemporary concert works for accordion. Open to all composers whether they are accordionists or not. Entry payment can be made by credit card at the AAA Store
Entries are welcome from all countries. Entry closing date is April 12, 2025.
Winners will be notified by email on or about July 01, 2025.
Elsie Bennett established the AAA Composers’ Commissioning Committee in 1954. As its permanent chair, she succeeded over the remainder of the century up to a short time before her death in 2005, in commissioning 55 works from 33 composers, many of whom were world famous.
For further information, see the memorial tribute of Elsie M. Bennett (1918 - 2005) by Faithe Deffner.
For non-accordionist contestants unfamiliar with the accordion, study the manual at
Composer's Guide to the Piano AccordionFirst Place: Jospeh Natoli: Tango frenetico
Joseph Natoli is one of the outstanding accordionists and composers in this field today. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Toronto where he studied with renowned Canadian accordionist, Joseph Macerollo. He started his musical career mostly as a performer, but had always been interested in composition, and has focused on his compositional craft even more in recent years.
He has written many original pieces in all musical styles and genres for standard and free bass accordion, as well as other instrumentation, all of which, including the winning piece for this contest, are available for purchase either on or via inquiry at www.janpressmusic.com/joseph-natoli . As its title implies, the Tango frenetico is a highly exciting and passionate work as the attached recording by the composer will surely reveal.
Second Place: Amy Jo Sawyer: Recuerdos (Memories)
Recuerdos sound file
A resident of O’Fallon, Illinois, Amy Jo Sawyer holds bachelor’s degrees in composition and Piano Performance and a master’s degree in Jazz Improvisation from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She has been the accordionist with the St. Louis Symphony on many occasions including performing Italian Love Songs with the famous Italian tenor, Luciano Pavarotti.
Ms. Sawyer has done extensive writing for accordion that includes solos, duets and accordion orchestra. Recuerdos (“Memories”) was originally written for accordion orchestra and was performed in 2018 at the Coupe Mondiale (World Contest) in Lithuania. Later on she arranged it for solo accordion, including both free bass and stradella left- hand options in the score. The piece begins with an eight-measure expressive quasi cadenza introduction in C-minor and then continues with Latin rhythms featuring flowing melodic lines bearing Spanish and Argentinian tango styles that modulate through the keys of G and F minor to its end.
Ms. Sawyer received the Composer of the Year Award in 2014 from the Illinois State Music Teachers Association and represented the state of Illinois as the Foundation Fellow at the Music Teachers National Association Convention in 2023. In addition to her outstanding work as an accordionist/composer, she is a nationally certified piano instructor by the MTNA and has written numerous selections for that instrument including solo, duet, and two-piano (for eight hands) works, eighteen of which have been approved for performance in the Achievement in Music (AIM) program of the Illinois State Music Teachers Association.
Both solo and orchestral versions of Recuerdos are available for purchase, as well as other compositions for accordion or piano by Ms. Sawyer, at AmyJo@AmyJoSawyer.com
Honorable mention: Viktor Stocker: Fantasie Triste
Victor Stocker (born 2009) has been playing the accordion since age 6 and is already the winner of many international competitions, including first place in the Odin International Music Competition, Danubia Talents Budapest, Australian International Accordion Championships, Vivo International Music Competition in New York, plus others in Prague, Ostrava, Vilnius, London and Vienna; and second place in the International Accordion Competitions in Klingenthal (2023) and Castelfidardo (2021). Viktor has also performed as soloist at a number of renowned music festivals.
In addition to being a busy performer, Viktor is a prolific composer for his instrument and has written a number of solos as well as mixed ensemble pieces including the accordion, the latter having received awards several times in international composition competitions. His submission to the 2024 AAA Composition Competition, Fantasie Triste, is at times meditative and at other moments highly dramatic and powerful, taking full advantage of the accordion’s special idiomatic effects.
See website, https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Stocker for more information and possible enquiries into purchasing scores of compositions by Viktor.
The results of the 2023 American Accordionists' Association (AAA) Elsie M. Bennett Composition Competition are:
1st place: Le Accordeon du Diable, for accordion and electronic track, by João Pedro Oliveira
2nd place: Walt's Curse, accordion solo, by Jacob Bean
Honorable mention:
Flicker, free bass accordion solo, by Kaidson Davis
Two Legs, One Peg, Two Arms, accordion solo, by Cody McSherry
Le Accordeon du Diable, for accordion and electronic track, by João Pedro Oliveira
Sound file: Le Accordeon du Diable (Maria Martonová, accordion)
Portuguese-born composer João Pedro Oliveira is Professor of Music in Composition at the University of California Santa Barbara. He holds advanced degrees in architecture (Lisbon School of Fine Arts), organ performance (Gregorian Institute, Lisbon), and music theory and composition (State University of New York Stony Brook).
Oliveira's music explores multiple facets of the interaction between acoustic instruments and electronic sounds, and, further, relationships between sound and images. His entry into this competition is a fine and captivating example of the former description. The accordion and the many scintillating and varied electronic sounds are well balanced and either contrasted from or blended with each other beautifully throughout.
Contact email: jppo@ucsb.edu
Walt's Curse, accordion solo, by Jacob Bean
Sound file: WaltsCurse
A resident of Puyallup, Washington, Jacob Bean is a 28-year-old composer, trombonist, and as of late, self-taught accordionist. He studied Trombone Performance and Composition at Central Washington University. However, because of his love for the accordion and enjoyment of playing “oom- pah” music, he taught himself to play marches, waltzes, rags, and polkas, with a predilection for the "Schweizer" (Swiss) style, on a used chromatic accordion he purchased online. He recently participated in the Leavenworth International Accordion Celebration competition where he placed first in the solo and band categories.
Walt's Curse (based on a tragic character, Walt Stone, in a series of fantasy novels by Rick Riordan entitled the "Kane Chronicles") is the first solo accordion work, as well as waltz, Jakob composed for that instrument and is superbly inventive and enthralling. He explains that he drew much of his inspiration from Russian Band waltzes as well as such "Russian greats" as Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. The piece begins with a haunting theme that returns frequently throughout in variation, each time becoming a little more, in the composer’s words, "twisted and devious." To this end, the composition exhibits several idiomatic accordion techniques, such as bellows shake, crossing the left hand over to play on the right-hand manual while the bellows fall open on their own to maintain air flow through the reeds, and more. Though conceived for the chromatic accordion, the score is devised to be equally playable on the piano accordion.
Contact address: trombone29@icloud.com
Sound file: Flicker, free bass accordion solo, by Kaidson Davis
Kaidson Davis is an accordion student of Joanna Arnold at the Acme Accordion Studio.
Flicker is an exciting, highly inventive etude similar in some ways to a passacaglia whose brief recurring bass motif propels the lines through many metamorphoses in rapid right-hand "flickering" arpeggios, creating a luminous, colorful effect.
Contact address: kaidson@protonmail.com
Two Legs, One Peg, Two Arms, by Cody McSherry
Sound file: accordion solo Cody McSherry
Cody McSherry, accordion student of Mary Tokarski, is a long-time participant in the AAA competitions and programs and is presently attending college.
Two Legs, One Peg, Two Arms is a delightful and clever jaunt, similar to a rag, with many variants, and fun, rhythmically stumbling "peg-leg" moments caused in part by the unusual, uneven time signature of 15/16.
Contact address: cosyarthurmcsherry@gmail.com
Neil Thornock, of Provo, Utah, won first place in the Elsie Bennett Composition Competition this year with his lovely, haunting accordion solo, Moon-k'ssed Conifers.
Neil Thornock has composed for a variety of forces including orchestral, electronic, chamber, and solo work. Much of his music is written for his own idiosyncratic keyboard technique on organ, piano, carillon, accordion, and other instruments. In 2019 he premiered his three-hour work Planetarium for organ and electronics.
Recently his work has explored alternative tuning systems, especially just intonation. In 2022, he premiered his work Primordial Bell for a piano tuned in high-limit rational intonation. Further projects in various tunings are underway.
Currently, Thornock is professor of composition and theory at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He and his wife Tammy are the parents of seven children.
Neil Thornock writes: "I composed Moon-kiss'd Conifers to showcase the stunning and very reverberant acoustic of the central atrium in the Harris Fine Arts Center at Brigham Young University, a building which will be demolished in the beginning of 2023. The slowly shifting harmonies and supple melodies give space for the resonance to shine through. The result is nocturnal and perhaps a bit liturgical.
It's also a farewell tribute to a building I have worked in and loved for more than half my life. As a late-life beginner of the accordion who has an extensive music background otherwise, I have been on the lookout for music that is easy enough for my budding technique but musically challenging enough to sustain my interest.
I wrote this piece to suit my own accordion technique, which mostly consists of carrying over my organ technique to the accordion keyboard and a little bit of left-hand experience."
Sample page of the music. Email Neil Thornock to purchase the music: neilthornock@gmail.com
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