Call for Scores – Fall 2019 Chamber Music @ AEIVA


  • Concert date: September 14, 2019, time TBD
  • Submission deadline: August 10, 2019
  • Concert location: Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts
  • Instrumentation: Any combination of string quartet, piano, mezzo-soprano, and soprano
  • Duration: No specific duration, though the concert will last one hour

Overview: BAMA is partnering with the UAB series “Chamber Music @ AEIVA” and the Alys Stephens Center’s “EMERGE Fest” to present a concert featuring “emerging artists” that connects chamber music with the art on display at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.

Eligible composers: This call is open to students and composers in the early stages of their careers. Submitting composers (1) must be full-time students or (2) must have had no commercial recordings, publications of their works, or ticketed performance by an orchestra or other large ensemble.

Art exhibit: Compositions must relate in some way to one or more of the following exhibits: Mary Frances Whitfiled “Why?”; Quention Morris “Meditations on Black”; Christina West “Unscene”. See below for descriptions of each exhibit and visit https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8ppdxvu0vcrzy8a/AABk1e_NA5A4B8H2sFD8ITHda?dl=0 for visual examples. The West and Morris images aren’t necessarily what will be displayed, but they give a sense of the artists’ work. The Whitfield is what will be on display.

Submissions: Send a PDF of your score plus parts to or mail a hard copy to:

Laura Usiskin
950 13th Street South, HC 231
Birmingham, AL 35294

Recordings are welcome but not required.

Submissions must include the following information:

  • Composer
  • Title
  • Duration
  • Date of composition
  • Instrumentation
  • Brief description of how the piece relates to the art

Questions? Contact:

Exhibit descriptions:

Mary Frances Whitfield: Why?

https://www.uab.edu/news/arts/item/10218-why-by-alabama-artist-mary-frances-whitfield-presented-by-uab-s-aeiva-may-31-nov-23

Exhibition Description:  

Co-curated by AEIVA Curator John Fields and Dr. Brandon Wolfe, Assistant VP of Campus and Community Engagement in the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at UAB, Mary Frances Whitfield: Why? is a collaborative exhibition between UAB’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

This exhibition was developed in conjunction with the Jefferson County Memorial Project (JCMP), a grassroots coalition of community leaders working with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to retrieve Jefferson County’s memorial from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The mission of the JCMP is to bear witness to the country’s painful past and change the historical memory of Jefferson County to better include its history of racial terror and the legacies of racial injustice.

One of the most significant of Alabama’s ‘Outsider Artists’, Mary Frances Whitfield uses painting to create intimate windows into her cultural past. Inspired by the rich and illuminative ancestral history offered in the stories told by her grandmother, Whitfield’s paintings present an affecting portrayal of daily existence for African Americans living in the Southern United States during the 18th and 19thcentury.

WHY? presents paintings inspired by the artist’s first visit to the BCRI. These works graphically depict horrific racial terror lynching perpetrated against African Americans. This is the first time these works have been exhibited in Whitfield’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama

Quentin Morris: Meditations on Black

Exhibition Description: Philadelphia-based artist Quentin Morris uses a variety of mediums to explore issues surrounding identity, race, spirituality, and cultural mythologies. What’s most interesting about this work is that for nearly 60 years, Morris has explored these themes through an astoundingly focused and prolific series of black monochrome paintings. These paintings are wonderfully subversive and deceptive in their depth. This will be Quentin Morris’ first major exhibition in the South.

Christina West: Unscene

Exhibition Description:

Christina West is an Associate Professor of Art at Georgia State University. West creates immersive sculptural installations that utilize figurative sculptures and the alteration of space to create psychologically charged environments. These installations explore notions of what the artist refers to as “individual subjectivity in our experience of reality, and the ways our physical encounters with spaces and with representations of bodies can affect perceptions of our own bodies.“