The worldwide appeal of writing for the world's number 1 ranked band has attracted entries from across the globe to be featured by Cory Band as part of their 2022 RWCMD Cory Composition Prize.

Bumper entries

Speaking about the success, MD Philip Harper told 4BR: "We had a sizeable response to the relaunch of this competition and this shortlist has been narrowed down from a bumper 35 entries.

I guess lots of people were busy creating new music during the pandemic, and in fact we had several pandemic-themed pieces."

He added: "I believe it's always important to encourage new music for our genre and there were many excellent quality entries. It was certainly a difficult decision to arrive at a final four and we want to thank all the composers that took part."

Finalists

The four finalists and their works are:

'The Tortoise and the Hare' (Ben Fuller — USA)
'Dance with the Brass Tonight' (Katerina Horka — Czech Republic)
'Aspects of the Sky' (Hans Loirs — France)
'Reminiscence' (Hendrik de Boer — The Netherlands)

The band will now set about rehearsing and performing each pieces, before revealing them all in a series of YouTube broadcasts later this year which will also feature interviews with the composers, judges and band members.

Viewer vote

Viewers will be able to vote for their favourite new piece which will be pronounced the winner.