An Interview with Duncan Tuomi, the Winner of the 2021 Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Competition

The August 2022 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an interview with Duncan Tuomi, the winner of the 2021 Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Competition. You can read it in its entirety at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction.
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The Brock Competition is operated by ACDA’s Composition Initiatives Committee, and the work was selected unanimously by the judges from among thirty-three student submissions. The Student Composition Competition opens every two years with the objectives to acknowledge and reward outstanding high school, undergraduate, and graduate student composers; encourage choral composition of the highest caliber; and promote student activity at ACDA conferences.

Tuomi is a student of choral music in the master of music program at the University of Southern California, studying composition with Dr. Frank Ticheli. He is also the associate conductor of the USC Thornton University Chorus. His work “The Rose That Bare Jesu” was performed at the 2022 Western ACDA Region Conference in Long Beach, California, by The Bob Cole Chamber Choir, conducted by Jonathan Talberg. Find more information about Duncan at: https://duncantuomi.com or email .

What inspired you to set this text?
This is a text that I’ve been attracted to for a long time. I’ve heard and sung a few settings of it since I was younger, and I even set it myself when I was in high school, though that version doesn’t resemble this one in any way. I love the simplicity of the poetic form: a rhyming couplet and a Latin word or phrase to conclude the thought. It lends itself very well to a strophic setting, so the fun in the composing came with finding variation within every repetition of the form

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ACDA Raymond W. Brock Professional Composers Prize: Submissions due August 15, 2022. Click here for more information.