Rapido! Take Eight

Rapido!®, a 14-Day Composition Contest, was founded by the Atlanta Chamber Players & The Antinori Foundation in 2009 to promote new chamber music compositions. The Rapido! Contest challenges composers of all ages to submit an original chamber work of 5-7 minutes composed in just 14 days: musical form and instrumentation are specified, culminating in a National Finals Concert with 5 Finalists competing.

Cycle Eight Quick Facts

  • Finals Concert is April 25, 2027 in Atlanta
  • No application fees
  • Over $12,000 in cash and prizes
  • Opportunity for a commission with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

 

For more information, email rapidocontest@gmail.com

Rapido! Winners

NICKY SOHN

with Home on the Range in 2024

Nicky Sohn (b. 1992, Seoul, South Korea) is a Houston-based composer known for jazz-inspired, rhythmically driven work spanning orchestral, chamber, ballet, and opera repertoire. She began composition studies at the Mannes School of Music, earned a Master of Music from The Juilliard School, and completed a doctorate at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Her commissions include the Stuttgart Ballet, the National Orchestra of Korea, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the New York Choreographic Institute at New York City Ballet. Sohn was named to Houston CityBook’s “Cool 100” in 2023 and received the 2026 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her winning Rapido! work, “Home on the Range,” reimagines the American folk song she first heard as a child sung in Korean by her mother.

Benjamin Krause

with Notes From Inside in 2021

Benjamin Krause is a composer and pianist active in contemporary music, jazz, and traditional classical repertoire, with performances at Carnegie Hall and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, among other venues. He has premiered and performed more than fifty new works in collaboration with artists including members of Eighth Blackbird, the Kronos Quartet, and the Boston Symphony. His work has been recognized through commissions, awards, and residencies from the Copland House, the Houston Symphony, the Atlanta Chamber Players, the Presser Foundation, and ASCAP, among others. Krause holds a D.M.A. from Rice University and an M.M. from the University of Oregon, and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He was named Grand Prize winner of the Rapido! Cycle Six contest in January 2021 for “Notes From Inside,” written for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Robichaux

Audience Favorite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Raphael Nabors

with Three Dances in 2019

Brian Raphael Nabors (b. 1991, Birmingham, Alabama) is a composer of emotionally enriching music that draws on Jazz, Funk, R&B, and Gospel alongside contemporary classical language. He earned a Bachelor of Music from Samford University and both a Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in Composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His work has been performed by the Boston, Atlanta, Nashville, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Munich Symphonies, among many others, and at venues including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Lucerne Festival. Nabors is a 2020 Fulbright scholar and 2021 Tanglewood Composition Fellow, and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Louisiana State University.

Mark Buller

with Regressive Variations in 2016

Mark Buller is a Houston-based composer and pianist whose music blends rich lyricism with bold gestures and striking rhythms. Originally from Maryland, he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Houston, studying with Marcus Maroney and Rob Smith. He has written four operas for Houston Grand Opera with librettist Charles Anthony Silvestri, along with choral and vocal works, and has been commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, Da Camera, and ROCO, among others. His choral work Mass in Exile had its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall in April 2026. He currently teaches at Houston City College and chairs Composition Studies at AFA.

Charles Zoll

with Bailes encima del escritorio de nuestra juventud (“Dances atop the school desks of our youth”) in 2013

Charles Zoll was a 21-year-old composer from Tucson, Arizona when he won the Rapido! Cycle Three national finals in January 2013. He had just completed a bachelor’s degree in music at the University of Arizona and went on to graduate study at McGill University in Montreal. His winning five-minute work for oboe, violin, cello, and piano was later expanded and premiered by the Atlanta Chamber Players to open their 2013–14 season, and he was awarded a Rapido!-sponsored residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts. Zoll is based in the Phoenix area, where he now serves as Director of Music & Technology Ministries at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chandler, leading concert and handbell programs, and also teaches piano to young students through Tucson Summer Music.

John Elmquist

in 2011

Dr. John Elmquist earned a D.M.A. in composition at the University of Memphis, where he studied with Don Freund. Based in Chicago, he is Music Director at Ebenezer Lutheran Church and teaches at several area schools, including the Chicago High School for the Arts and the Merit School of Music. A multi-talented performer and composer who also works as a bassist and pianist, Elmquist leads HardArt groop, an ensemble he formed in 1999 to perform his own music, which blends jazz, avant-garde, and classical influences. In 2007 he received an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Elmquist won First Prize in the Rapido! Cycle Two contest in 2011.

Jon Jeffrey Grier

with Diverse Variations on A-C-P in 2009

Jon Jeffrey Grier is a composer, educator, and pianist based in Greenville, South Carolina. He holds a B.A. from Kalamazoo College, an M.M. in Composition from Western Michigan University, and an M.M. in Theory and a D.M.A. in Composition from the University of South Carolina. From 1988 to 2019 he was Instructor of Music Theory and History, and Composer in Residence, at the Greenville Fine Arts Center, where he was voted Teacher of the Year three times. His awards include the 2016 South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship in Music Composition, the 2016 Composer Commission from the South Carolina Music Teachers Association, and the 2014 Carl Blair Award for Excellence in Arts Education. He was the winner of the inaugural 2009 Rapido! Composition Contest.