17-Year-Old Receives Honorable Mention from BMI Student Composer Award Again

In May 2022, the Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) announced the winners of the 70th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards. BMI is one of the three performance rights organizations in the United States, the other two being ASCAP and SESAC. The BMI awards have a long history, with its pop music award being the most well-known by the public - winners include Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Linkin Park, and Taylor Swift.  

BMI Student Composer Awards

Created in 1951, the BMI Student Composer Awards is one of the most prestigious composition competitions that target young classical music composers in the western world. The competition requires applicants to be citizens from western countries and under 28 years of age. Since its creation, the BMI Student Composer Awards has awarded over 600 individuals, among whom fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, such as John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Kevin Puts, Sean Shepherd, William Bolcom, Cindy McTee, Joseph Schwantner, Bernard Rands, Tobias Picker, Ingram Marshall, and Kristin Kuster.

Lucy Chen Receives Honorable Mention from the 69^th and 70^th BMI Annual BMI Student Composer Awards

Lucy Receives the Honorable Mention in the 70^th Annual Annual BMI Student Composer Awards

Lucy Chen, an 11^th-grade student from Maryland, receives the honorable mention in the 70th Annual Annual BMI Student Composer Awards. The competition selected seven prize winners and three honorable mentions from over 600 applicants.

Lucy with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, a BMI Student Composer Awards Judge and the First Female Putlizer Prize Winner

This is not the first time that Lucy has shone in professional music competitions. At age 16, Lucy stood out among 500 applicants and won the honorable mention in the 69th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards in 2021. The other receiver of the honorable mention that year, Sofia Ouyang (21), is an undergraduate student of Julliard School instructed by Professor Andrew Norman, who is the winner of Grammy, Pulitzer, and Grawemeyer Awards. Lara Poe (27), one of the year’s prize winners, studied under Sir George Benjamin.

Prize Winners of the 69th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards

In addition to winning the BMI awards, Lucy also received an honorable mention from the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and the second prize in the orchestral division of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York’s Emerging Composers Competition in 2021.

Winners of the 2021 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (Left) and the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York’s Emerging Composers Competition (Right)

“The ultimate stage in music composition is the cultural foundation,” says Yiming Wu, Lucy’s composition teacher and founder of the Mayflower Art Center. Lucy’s parents brought her to various art exhibitions around the world since her early childhood. These experiences helped Lucy build a deep appreciation for the intersection of art, music, and culture.

Lucy and Yiming Wu

Aside from composition, Lucy has also shown extraordinary talents in performance. She won the third prize in the student division of the 2022 American Prize piano competition. She is also a violinist in Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras (MCYO) and wrote two orchestra pieces for the Philharmonic group. The works were performed at the concert celebrating MCYO’s 75^th Anniversary and received widespread praise. Lucy is also the founder of the non-profit organization Young Artists Music Society (YAMS). Established in 2019, YAMS aims to provide free music courses and concerts to communities with limited access to music education.

Lucy will start applying for college this winter. She hopes to apply for a double major in music composition and another concentration. Let’s wish this talented and good-hearted girl to succeed in the pursuit of her music dreams.