CreArtBox opens its 2027/28 Calls for Scores

New York, NY, 22 October 2026. CreArtBox, the New York chamber music ensemble, has opened its annual Calls for Scores for the 2027/28 season. Two calls take applications from today until 15 December 2026: CA1/2026, open to composers of any nationality, and CA2/2026, for composers who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Both are read by the same jury, both ask for two works, and both feed the same season.

Eleven of the works the ensemble plays in 2026/27 arrived through these calls, more than in any previous season. They are not set apart in a new-music evening: they share programmes with Brahms, Schumann, Stravinsky and Sibelius, and on 23 April 2027 an entire New York Series production, Pressure and Release, is given over to them.

The calls accept works for any instrumentation. The core ensemble is flute, violin, viola, cello and piano, the five musicians who read every score received, and the group regularly engages other players for a production. Where a selected work asks for forces the ensemble does not have, it brings in the musicians it needs or discusses a version with the composer, after the selection and never without them. Most of what CreArtBox programmes runs between 5 and 15 minutes and asks for no more than eight players; the calls treat those figures as guidance rather than as a rule, and works already performed or recorded are eligible.

The first round is read blind. The material is prepared by someone outside the jury and reaches the readers numbered, with the composer, the biography, the website and the country removed, and applicants are asked to take their name off the score and out of the file name. The second round is not: once the works have been chosen on the music alone, the jury looks at who wrote them and decides where each piece belongs in a season. The jury is made up of members of the ensemble, the musicians who will play the work, together with composers selected in earlier cycles of the call.

We read everything twice, and the first time we do not know whose it is. That is the part of the process we are most careful about, because it is how a composer nobody in the room has heard of ends up in the same evening as Brahms.

Selected works are performed in the 2027/28 season, rehearsed with the ensemble and recorded. Earlier cycles of the programme resulted in commissions of $10,000 and in selected works taken on tour in the United States and Europe.

At a glance

• Who · CA1/2026, composers of any nationality. CA2/2026, composers who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Any age, any career stage.
• What to send · Two works: scores in PDF with the name removed, a recording or a MIDI realisation for each, the title, year, duration and instrumentation, and a short note on each piece.
• Open · 22 October 2026. Deadline · 15 December 2026.
• Answer · Every applicant hears back by spring 2027.
• Fee · $20, which pays for the selection process and nothing else.
• How to apply · Through the application form. Submissions sent by email are not read.

Full guidelines: CA1/2026, international composers and CA2/2026, American composers. Both are also downloadable as PDFs: CA1/2026 and CA2/2026.

CreArtBox is a New York chamber music ensemble founded in 2013 by flutist Guillermo Laporta and pianist Josefina Urraca, now in its twelfth season. It gives its New York Series at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, tours internationally, and co-produces Festival ADAR in rural Asturias, Spain. Press enquiries: marketing@creartbox.nyc.