2026 Call for scores winners

AMP is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2026 Call For Scores. The competition was open to Black American composers of all ages. Winners will have their solo piano compositions performed during AMP’s 2026-2027 season.
Performance dates TBA.

Christa V. Bailey - Exchange

Marcus Rock -Vestige

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Christa Vanesia Bailey was born on February 10th, 2002, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Beginning her musical journey in elementary school, Bailey’s passion soon developed into a love for percussion. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Percussion Performance from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and a Master of Music Composition from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where she received the Frost Emerging Composer Award in 2025. Bailey continues her education at the Frost School of Music pursuing a Doctor of Music in Composition. Inspired by Third Stream, Bailey creates works that dissolve stylistic boundaries, blending the rhythmic vitality of Jazz, the structural depth of Classical, and the expressive freedom of improvisation. Bailey’s work has been presented on concert stages, recorded in studios, and written for film, reflecting her versatility as a composer. Her compositions invite performers into intimate and collaborative musical experiences. https://www.instagram.com/christa._.writes/

About Exchange (2025)

“Exchange” is an ode to my love of puzzles and the two instruments I have the most performance experience with, piano and percussion. Primarily influenced by Prokofiev’s 1937 10 Pieces from Romeo & Juliet, I integrated modernist styles such as persistent dissonances and wide melodic leaps with polyrhythms, syncopation, a consistent groove, and jazz/gospel-inspired harmonic progressions. The solo begins with a lyrical prelude that concludes with dramatic glissandi. The listener is then introduced to one of the two angular motifs present in this piece. The two motifs are like two halves of a puzzle coming together in the midst of the solo. As the motifs evolve, the intensity builds.

Marcus Rock is an award winning composer based in New York whose work explores unstable sonic energies, microtonal harmony, rhythmic transformation, the expressive potential of unusual frequencies, and DAW-based composition. He is pursuing a DMA in Composition at Columbia University, where he has studied with George E. Lewis and Georg Friedrich Haas. His music has been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Contemporaneous, The Rhythm Method, and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. Recent projects include the premiere of Glass Trees by ICE at Columbia; the New York premiere of Serpentine by Contemporaneous, conducted by David Bloom at Roulette Intermedium; the premiere of fluido at Fridman Gallery; the premiere of his solo-violin work Tendrils and Tremors by Fenella Humphreys at Kings Place, London; and the German premiere of Codex by Esfahani at the Elbphilharmonie. His music brings rigorous processes into contact with volatile, sensuous, and physically charged sound. 

About Vestige (2025)

“Vestige” is an exploration of return, presence, and transformation. Throughout the work, repetitions function as evocations of vivid memories: each return subtly alters the listener’s sense of dramaturgy, weight, and direction. These repetitions generate delicate pulsations, afterimages as interference patterns, allowing the music to question itself. What returns is heard through what has already passed: melancholic memory, reshaped in the present. The work should be approached with close attention to resonance, decay, silence, and timing. Pedal is not merely supportive, but a constructive device, capable of blurring, binding, or separating gestures. Slight differences of touch, pacing, and color can significantly alter the character of returning material, making one appearance urgent, another suspended, and another distant or fragile. https://www.instagram.com/m.a.d.rock/?hl=en