It surely feels like it was just last weekend that we were at Central Washington University witnessing an amazing Winners Concert. Teacher after teacher mentioned to me about our students’ programming choices: of 10 student winners able to attend the concert, seven performed works by underrepresented composers. The result was a concert of stunning contrast, depth, emotion and bravura; each student had a distinct artistic voice.
We would like to thank Cherie Felts and Julie Swienty, past chairs of OAPC and MTNA Performance Competition, for their vision of the Underrepresented Composers Award, which is now a prize in every category of OAPC and MTNA Performance Competitions.
I am temporarily assuming the WSMTA Competition Chair role as we work on finding a replacement for Julie Swienty.
Below is the information about this year’s MTNA Performance Competitions:
For Piano, String, Woodwind, and Piano Duet divisions
- Date of the Competitions: November 6-8, 2026
- Location of the Competitions: Central Washington University
- Registration available: August 1, 2026
- Registration Deadline: Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time (on MTNA website.)
For complete MTNA competition guidelines and registration, please go to:
https://www.mtna.org/Performance_Guidelines.html
Just as in last year, the order of performance will be determined by the time stamp of the registration: The earliest to register will be the last to perform. (We will take into consideration the accompanist availability.) We urge you to register your students as early as possible.
Also, we ask that you submit the correct name of the accompanist at the time of registration.
Students will have an option to designate one piece from their repertoire for consideration of the WSMTA Underrepresented Composers Award. To make sure the piece qualifies, please check against our list of eligible composers.
Once you have registered your student on the MTNA website, you will also need to submit an application to designate the piece for the Underrepresented Composers award on the WSMTA website:
This year, our judges are:
Piano Category:
Archie Chen
Leann Osterkamp He
Stephen Olsen
String Category:
Julia Tai
Mary Manning
Ruth Boden
Woodwind Category:
Timothy Hagen (Junior and Senior divisions)
Julia Tai (Young Artist division)
You can find the judge’s bio as well as complete details the competition at:
https://wsmta.org/programs-for-students/competitions/mtna-student-performance-competition/
For Chamber Music, Senior Brass and Voice, and Young Artist Brass and Voice divisions:
- The Preliminary Round will be by video submission only.
- Registration will be available on November 1, 2026.
- The deadline for registration and video submission to Acceptd is December 2, 2026, 3:00 PM Eastern Time.
We hope to see your students at Central Washington University in November!