Students achieve top musical honors

Practice paid off for Joseph Sheehan and Jeffrey Stanek. The two composers received awards June 6 in New York City by demonstrating superior creative talent for an original musical composition. The two, who are School of Music students and are both studying musical composition, were two of just eight winners out of more than 500 manuscripts that were submitted at the 53rd annual Broadcast Music Incorporated Student Composer Awards. \nSheehan, a doctoral student in musical composition, was awarded the William Schuman Prize -- named after the former Chairman of the BMI Student Awards -- which is given to the composer whose work is judged "most outstanding." This was the second time Sheehan had received the prize. He is the only composer in the competition's 53-year history to win the honor twice.\nStanek, pursuing a Bachelor of Music in composition, received his second award from BMI for his original solo percussion piece entitled, "I Can't Sleep." In 2003, Stanek was one of two recipients of the Carlos Surinach Prize, which is awarded to the two youngest winners at the BMI contest.\nSheehan's award-winning composition, "Sail Away to Soft Sweet Bells," was first played at IU by an ad hoc orchestra organized by Sheehan and a friend. It was his first completed attempt at an orchestral piece and was influenced by his fascination with sailing and his memories of being on a lake in his uncle's boat.\n"It's exciting and gratifying," Sheehan said. "Writing music is something very personal and you're usually doing it in solitude. You're spending a lot of time by yourself and you don't know if what you're doing is meaningful, and it's pretty great to win recognition from a national competition like this." \nBMI is a non-profit company responsible for collecting licensing fees on behalf of the artists it represents. While BMI was established in 1939, the student awards were not founded until 1951, but have since become one of the most prestigious and challenging competitions for young composers; all applicants must be enrolled in accredited institutions, under 26 years of age and citizens of countries in the Western Hemisphere. Eleven former winners of the prominent awards have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.\nBefore Sheehan and Stanek were catching the ear of BMI judges, their musical faculties were being nurtured by their parents at a remarkably young age. Stanek was seven years old when he first started to take piano lessons and compose music with an instructor, but was even younger when his parents began to pick up on the signs of his musical talents. \n"He always had a musical ear," said Steve Stanek, Jeffrey's father. "Even when he was learning to play the piano at age five or six it would have a very musical quality to it. He was always musically inclined."\nSheehan also showed similar signs of original and creative musical abilities at an extraordinarily early age when he began playing the piano at only four years old.\n"Even when I young, without really knowing what I was doing, I would improvise on the piano and fiddle around," Sheehan said. \nSince entering the School of Music, their harmonious gifts have only been challenged and cultivated further. \n"The talent level here is incredible," Sheehan said. "The breadth and size of the program; there are so many people here that you can pretty much do anything you imagine if you work hard enough"