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Silver Melted Into Sound
On this page:
- About Silver Melted Into Sound
- 2025 Resident Composer
- Musicians and Artists
- Registration
- Silver Melted Into Sound Composition Contest
- Essay Competition
- Poetry Competition
- Previous Festivals
- Collaborative Partnerships
About Silver Melted Into Sound
May 2, 2025
Wright State Dayton Campus
Silver Melted Into Sound is a festival celebrating the unique voices and viewpoints we all bring to music and the arts. Beginning as a music festival for concert bands, vocal ensembles, and string orchestras designed to support the programming of diverse composers, it has grown to include the works of writers, poets, and new composers. This year's event will be held on May 2, 2025, on the campus of Wright State University.
Performing Ensembles will have 20 minutes on stage in Schuster Hall or in the Festival Theater to perform for feedback from a panel of adjudicators. This 20-minute block will include time to enter and exit the stage. Directors may decide how they wish to use their performance time from the following options:
- Perform one large work by an underrepresented composer
- Perform two works, one of which must be by an underrepresented composer
- Perform three works, two of which must be by an underrepresented composer
- Underrepresented composers are defined as people of color, women, or other marginalized gender identities
After their performance, ensembles will receive a performance clinic on the repertoire of the underrepresented composer. Students will also meet with guest artists and composers for an interactive discussion about the importance of having many voices represented in music literature and the value of performing works by underrepresented composers.
In the News
- A Chance to Shine
- This is ours
- WYSO Interview with Bill Jobert
- Paul Laurence Dunbar at the heart of inaugural Wright State Festival
2025 Resident Composer
Sonia Morales-Mato
Sonia Ivette Morales-Matos (b. 1961) is a Puerto Rican composer, performer, and educator who belongs to a family of distinguished musicians. She has a BM degree from Berklee College of Music, where she studied composition and jazz, and a MM degree in both Composition and Jazz Studies from Indiana University in Bloomington. While in Indiana University, she studied with distinguished professors such as David Baker, Dominic Spera, Juan Orrego-Salas, Claude Baker, and John Eaton. She also holds a certificate in Music Education from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. She was the 2016’s recipient of the Dr. Herman Hudson Alumnus Award presented by the African American Arts Institute of Indiana University for her excellence as an educator, performer, and composer. In June 2019, she received recognitions from the City of Santa Ana, the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana, CA, for her participation in the “Latino Masters Concert'' as a composer, performer, and educator, and for her contribution to the community of the City of Santa Ana, California, USA.
Morales-Matos brings a Latin American flare to her musical compositions. Her identity finds a voice in the rhythmic and harmonic sounds of her music. Some of her works are El Niño (2025), Tropical Overture (2022), and Fiesta No.1, for string ensemble, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Fiesta No.2, for String Quartet and Percussion with String Orchestra (2023) was commissioned by the Dali String Quartet and the Lumos Orchestra, and Fiesta No.3, for Orchestra was premiered by the Symphony Orchestra of Puerto Rico (Feb. 2024). Other works premiered in 2024 are: Fiesta No. 4, for Wind Ensemble and Percussion, commissioned by Wright State University Bands, “a work with sounds from the Caribbean, intertwined with South American sounds like the Venezuelan joropo,” says Morales-Matos, and Divertimento Caribeño No. 6, for trumpet and orchestra. Some compositions for solo or chamber groups include Miniatura Tropical, for harp solo, Joyful Trio, for clarinets in Bb, and Divertimento Caribeño No.3, for string quartet, which was recently recorded by the Dalí String Quartet. Recently, she completed Divertimento Caribeño No.7, a commission for the Victory Players in Holyoke, MA, which will premiere this June 2025. At the present, she is working on a commission for “The Whistling Hens” which will premiere in October 2025.
Sonia resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, her home since 2004. She performs regularly and works as an educator in the Public School District of the City of Cincinnati.
Musicians and Artists
Stephan Naylor
Registration
$60 Registration Fee per ensemble
Registration has closed for the 2025 festival.
Silver Melted Into Sound Composition Contest
Composition Contest Rules and Regulations
The music festival Silver Melted into Sound again calls for compositions designed to increase repertoire written for Intermediate High School Band, Choir, and Orchestra. The competition is open to all composers and encourages entries by underrepresented composers, including people of color, women and other marginalized genders, or persons with a disability and/or to draw attention to the powerful Appalachian poet Kari Gunter-Seymour.
The composition must be written for one of the following ensembles and at the performance level of a high school, Grade 3 ensemble:
- Concert Band – standard instrumentation
- String Orchestra
- Chorus – SATB
The composition must be inspired by the poetry of Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate.
- Priority will be given to people who consider themselves to be part of an underrepresented population.
- There is no entry fee.
Entry Information
- Entries must be received via email to gretchen.mcnamara@wright.edu by April 4, 2025, and will not be considered without registration using the link above. In your email submission, please include your name and your diversity qualifications.
- Entries must include a PDF score and a .mp3 or .wav sound file of the composition.
- The winning composition will be announced at the Silver Melted into Sound Music Festival on Friday, May 2, 2025.
- The winning composition will receive a $250 cash prize sponsored by Theta Eta Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity and a world premiere performance by a Wright State University music ensemble during the 2025-2026 academic year.
Four Kari Gunter-Seymour poems have been pre-selected for use in this Composition Contest. These poems are and are shared with permission and can be found in her newly published book, Dirt Songs, Eastover Press (2024).
Essay Competition
Topic: What formative role, if any, does music play in preparing you to be an active member of our diverse democracy?
The essay competition is available for high school and college students involved with a music program at school or in your community.
To enter, submit an essay of 500–700 words answering the topic shown above.
Email your entry to william.jobert@wright.edu no later than April 10, 2026. Please be sure your entry includes your name, contact information, school, and the way in which you are involved in music in your school or community.
Winning essays will be announced on April 24, 2026.
One winning essay from each category of high school and college writers will receive a check for $100* presented during the Silver Melted Into Sound Festival on May 1, 2026. Essays will be displayed during Silver Melted Into Sound and printed in the online program.
2025 Winners
Congratulations to the 2025 Silver Melted Into Sound Essay Competition Winners!
Poetry Competition
For several years we have been hosting a music composition competition with composers taking their inspiration from poetry. This year, we want to see what happens when we invert that creative process.
For the 2026 Poetry Competition we will have 4 sound files available on this page. They appear without title or composer, though we have permission from the composer to use their works on our site. We would like you to select one of the files to serve as inspiration for a poem. The music appears without title so that you are not influenced by the composer's expressive or programmatic intentions. You are not writing what you think the composer would want, you are writing what the music makes you want to express and how it inspires you will be unique to you.
Competition Guidelines
There will be two categories of competitors: Youth (ages 14-18) and Adult (ages 19 and up). The winning poem from each category will receive a $75 award stipend.* Additionally, the poem will appear on our website and in our online festival program.
Please see the Poetry Rubric (PDF) for guidance on how works will be evaluated.
Entries should be emailed to William.jobert@wright.edu no later than April 10, 2026.
Please be sure your entry includes your name, age division, contact information and the number of the sound file that inspired your writing.
Winning Poems will be announced May 1, 2026.
Sound Files
2026 sounds files will be available sometime in the fall of 2025.
2025 Winners
Congratulations to the 2025 Silver Melted Into Sound Essay Competition Winners!
2025 Youth Poets Category Winners
Ethan Guisinger, Wyatt Adams-Jette, Caiden Nelson, and Christian Coffey
2025 Adult Poets Category Winner
Dante Colding
Previous Festivals
2023 Festival Recap
2022 Festival Recap
Collaborative Partnerships
Silver Melted Into Sound and the celebration of diverse artists have created partnerships across the Wright State University campus. Collaboration of ideas and the sharing of resources have come from faculty, students, and administration to make this event a reality.
- Division of Inclusive Excellence
- Dunbar Library Special Collections
- College of Liberal Arts (COLA)
- Wright State Admissions
- School of Fine and Performing Arts
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 27, 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African-American literary figures to garner critical acclaim on a national scale. Although he lived just thirty-three years, Dunbar's contributions in a variety of genres left a legacy that endures today. His poetry has a lyricism and rhythmic pulses that feel like music. With his connections to Dayton and Wright State University, it seemed fitting to draw our inspiration and festival title from a line of Dunbar’s poetry.
Paul Laurence Dunbar poems (PDF)
