We’re proud to announce the winners of the Summer Starshine contest!

First, a big “thank you” goes out to all who entered this contest, for variations on Mozart’s theme Ah vous dirai-je Maman, popularly known as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. There were 108 official entries in the contest. It was not at all easy to winnow these down given the high quality of so much of the music, and we want to thank everyone for their patience. The judges worked hard, and in the end they had to pick winners, although there were more deserving entries than there were prizes.

The results are as follows:

1st Place: Starshine 2009 by pscohn (Paul Cohn)
2nd Place: Starshine Multiverse by Robert Nissim
3rd Place: Starshine neutrinos by greenholh10 (William Greenhalgh)

Paul Cohn’s winning entry presents the theme in a pensive mood with a dark harmonic touch. Robert Nissim applied a dizzying array of reharmonizations that continue to surprise and surprise again as they circle around. And William Greenhalgh’s daring treatment used the theme as an abstract skeleton for an exploration of sound and shape.

The winner receives a $500 Sweetwater gift certificate; runners-up will receive a Noteflight T-shirt.

But that’s not quite all! Making the final selection was so difficult that the judges wanted to call attention to the following submissions, that they felt were of exceptionally high quality:

Guitar Starshine (Twinkle Variation) by crazymusician
Star Waltz (Starshine) by A Strom
6 Variations and fugue on the Starshine theme by lucamadeus
Starshine in Blue by pianogirl (R. Luppe)

Finally, please don’t forget that you can find all the “Starshine” pieces by simply signing into Noteflight and searching for “Starshine”.
Once again, the judges were:

Alex Ruthmann, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Massachusetts – Lowell

Donald Byrd, Ph.D.
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music at Indiana University