A UTM student has won the 2005 Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s Young Composer’s Composition contest.

Justin Condron, a senior music education major from Milan, won the competition and will have his work, Campbell Recalls the Journey, performed by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, Nov. 20 at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville. The theme of the concert is “Young Masters” and, along with Justin’s composition, will feature a nationally recognized 14-year-old violinist. It will end with Grieg’s Symphony in C minor by Norway’s most notable composer, Edvard Grieg. This piece, one of his earliest compostions, was composed when Grieg was only 20 years old.

Condron has never taken any formal composition lessons; his writing comes strictly from music theory and his love for composition. His only instruction is from UTM theory professor Dr. Scott Roberts.

Campbell Recalls the Journey is described as a “pleasurably dark piece of music telling of a college trip taken by the composer and his friends. Beautiful horizons, unrelenting thunderstorms, funerals and swash-buckling pirates all occupy their own place in the piece.”

“I was at a band camp in Milan when I found out I had won,” says Condron. “ My dad came out and told me I had won, and I jumped up and down for about fifteen minutes. I was elated, to say the least.”

Campbell Recalls the Journey is Condron’s first completed work for large ensemble, and, more significantly, his first attempt at composing for strings. He has previously composed two trombone solos and two trombone quartets. He has also arranged music for the UTM Low Brass Ensemble and Clarinet Ensemble.

This was the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s first statewide competition for young composers.

All aspiring composers under the age of 25 were eligible. The composition had to be between 10 and 15 minutes in length, and completely original. It could not have been performed previously or won any other award.

“When I found out I had won, I was more relieved than anythiing,” says Condron. “I believed the whole time that I could win it.”