Is the European Recording Orchestra “Call for Scores” competition legitimate and endorsed by Steinberg? It displays Steinberg and Dorico logos.
I’m asking because, in the songwriting world, there are quite a few fake contests that use logos without permission.
If the prizes are legit, which include Dorico trials and discounts, it should be, I guess!
Listening to some of the winning tracks, it seems like they’re looking for compositions that sound like “film music”. Too bad.
Mike
exactly – from listening to a couple of examples, I’m sure their taste and mine are poles apart. To be fair, everything in the blurb about the competition suggests that they’re film music orientated.
I’m not familiar with this competition, but if indeed the prizes include “Dorico trials” (?) that sounds a little peculiar.
well, it DOES say on their webpage that the call for scores competition is “curated by the Film Scoring Academy of Europe”
the prizes also seem to be almost entirely film-score related…
The top 50 submissions get an hour and a half with Chris Young (one of my favourite film composers, actually. a friend of mine studied with him in LA)
Just my $0.02, but most “competitions” that don’t provide any feedback to the applicants are basically fundraising scams. In addition to normal college auditions/juries, I’ve often been a judge for a major international saxophone competition, and from its inception until this year was a saxophone judge for the summer jazz program at Carnegie Hall. (Just had to bail on that due to time constraints). To do the job well and provide useful feedback, judging takes time, and judges have to be paid. Judging pay usually is crummy, but it’s either supported by the institution hosting the competition, or the application fee.
This competition only mentions “Individual Feedback Sheets from the Jury” for the top 10 finalists. That’s super scammy IMO and the vast majority of applicants won’t even get any helpful feedback. Even if you “win” by placing in the top 250, you just get €1,000 off a course that costs €9,500. I bet almost all applicants will place in the top 250 or 150 just to drive traffic to those courses. The whole thing just screams “fundraising scam” to me, but it is pretty cheap to enter, so you’re not out much by trying.
I’m not 100% onboard with ANY competition that requires a participation fee.
I figure that if it’s a serious competition they will have sponsors which eliminates the need for fees.
As if composers were the richest people around and had money to throw at competitions.
Here’s an image from their FAQs:
Only the top 10 are adjudicated anonymously! So it’s not anonymous until the final 10 are picked, so there’s nothing really preventing the judges from picking their own students and friends to advance that far. Oof.
By contrast, here’s the judging description for the Vandoren Emerging Artist competition, which I have been a judge for:
The Acceptd software used for judging is completely anonymous for this competition, and all I know is the number assigned to the applicant. Of course there are sometimes disagreements among judges about the top finishers, but generally the top 10 lists all contain the same names, even though it is completely anonymous. Good luck making the top 10 in this ERO “competition” without personally knowing the judges.
I went for it last year, and can confirm the complete absence of feedback, not even general information about the progress of the judging and winners’ announcement.
Thank you!
Agree with you 100%. I have been on both sides of these things for many years and I always cringe a bit when there is no feedback given to applicants. As a college professor I have a hard time telling my students that it is worth it to enter a “competition” that requires payment without feedback. What are they paying for? I know for certain that a lot of those competitions don’t pay all the judges. 
