ANBOC 2026

Composing for young musicians doesn’t mean a composer composes a complex piece and then edits out a certain number of notes to make the music easier for those young musicians to play. Composing for young musicians entails a mindset that strives at every opportunity to write music for those young musicians – music that engages, challenges and satisfies both player and conductor and brings delight to the audience.

Zoltan Kodaly stated that, “Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this...only the best is good enough for a child”. It’s reasonable then to assume that Kodaly argued that we should lead children to good music via good music; anything less is a betrayal of the young hearts and minds in our care.

How, then, does a composer go about doing that and how do those entrusted with selection of such repertoire for publication go about choosing “…only the best…for a child”? In this workshop session two of the industry’s most experienced and skilled exponents of such decision-making processes will discuss both their compositional and editorial imperatives. Moderating the session is professional with decades of experience selecting repertoire for festival collections and competition lists.

“Real art”, asserts Kodaly, “is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity”. Come and see how these two industry leaders strive to do just that for the young musicians in bands and orchestras world-wide.