(MORRISTOWN, NJ) -- Harmonium Choral Society has announced the winners of the 29th Annual High School Composition Contest. Sophomore Theodore Tavi Hein from Kinnelon has won the grand prize. Senior Gabriel Tarrow of Columbia High School takes second prize, placing for the fourth time. Senior Ryan Snyder of Morristown wins third prize, and two honorable mentions were also awarded to Basking Ridge senior Nate Lawton from Rutgers Preparatory School and freshman Anuj Shah from JFK Memorial High School in Iselin.
Artistic Director Dr. Anne Matlack says, "I am especially excited to be able to perform three of the winning pieces this year. You will be inspired and amazed. We are also offering free tickets to the June concert to any high school composers and teachers who would like to learn more about the contest for next year. We will hold a brief interest Q&A about the contest half an hour before each performance."
As well as featuring the student pieces, the spring concert, Ride the Storm, Saturday, June 6th @7:30pm and Sunday, June 7th @3:00pm at Morristown United Methodist Church, features powerful new settings of texts by Alexander Hamilton, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Lafayette—brought to life by composers including David Thomson, Melissa Dunphy, Jackson Berkey, Laurel Luke Christensen, and Mark Miller. It celebrates America's revolutionary ideals and today's pressing questions of identity, justice, and unity. It also features Billings, Bernstein and fiddle tunes.
Advance tickets are available for purchase online. Student tickets are only $5. Morristown United Methodist Church is located at 50 S Park Place in Morristown, New Jersey.
Theodore Tavi Hein, a sophomore composer-performer-pianist from Kinnelon is this year's grand prize winner with a setting of the Sara Teasdale poem Spring in War-Time for piano and chorus. Theodore studies classical and jazz music theory, composition, piano, and voice with Eric Olsen at The Lindeblad School of Music in NJ and with several teachers at Mannes Conservatory in NYC in the honors program of the prep division.
Winner of the 2025 MEA-NJ Eric Steiner Original Composition Competition for his solo piano work Autumn: A Nocturne, Theo is also one of the youngest ever composers invited to the International Summer Music Festival and Academy (ISAM) in Ochsenhausen, Germany, where, in 2025, he premiered a chamber piece and a duet for piano and flute. He recently won the 2026 MEA-NJ Eric Steiner Original Composition Competition for his solo piano piece Enigma of the Night Sky: A Fantasia in Light and Shadow loosely inspired by the works of Debussy.
Second prize winner Gabriel Tarrow is a senior at Columbia High School in Maplewood. He has been playing the piano for more than twelve years, composing for eleven, and plans to major in harpsichord. He draws inspiration from Baroque and modern choral music. Gabriel's sponsor is choral teacher Nicholas Diaz. This is Gabe's fourth time placing in the contest. This year's work The Rising of the Storm sets several verses of a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem for piano and chorus.
Ryan Snyder, third place, is a senior at Morristown High School. He participates in his school's orchestra, honors choir, glee club, and jazz choir. He has been composing music since he was a freshman in high school. He is a section leader in the honors choir and co-founded the jazz choir. Ryan was sponsored by chorus teacher Christine Scott. He also set Teasdale's Spring in War-time, for a cappella chorus.
The full Harmonium chorus will perform the first and second prize winners, while the select 24-voice Chamber Singers will perform the third-place piece.
Judges
Laurel Luke Christensen, Harmonium's Emerging-Composer-in-Residence holds BM and MM degrees in music education. Her compositions have won the Virginia Chorale, Siena College, and ACDA-PA Choral Composition Competitions.
Their newest judge, Kevin Beavers grew up in Appalachia, in Keyser, West Virginia and studied at the University of Michigan, at Tanglewood, and in Amsterdam on a Fulbright scholarship. He has taught composition and theory at Interlochen Arts Camp, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Colorado Boulder, and his music has been recognized with major awards, commissions, and a three-year residency with the California Symphony. Now based in Düsseldorf, Germany, he has collaborated extensively with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, who have commissioned and premiered several of his works.
Dr. Trevor Weston, professor of music and chair of the music department at Drew University, holds many honors including a 2021 Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Artistic Director Dr. Anne Matlack rounds out the team of judges, who provide every student entrant (not just winners) with detailed written feedback and encouragement.
Funding has been made possible in part by Morris Arts through the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Harmonium Choral Society is a participating arts organization that offers free tickets through the Families First Discovery Program.
Harmonium Choral Society, based in Morris County, is one of New Jersey's leading choral arts organizations. The 100-voice choral society, directed by Dr. Anne Matlack of Madison, has been recognized for its eclectic programming, choral excellence, and community spirit, and sponsors commissions and musicianship workshops to advance the choral arts. A subset of the chorus performs in schools, elder care facilities, and other venues.
