Listen to Jasmine’s original composition submitted with her entry.
Listen to Jasmine’s composition performed by the QYO Chamber Orchestra.
Jasmine Lai [Age 14, Vic]
Composition: Encore
Jasmine is a young composer, pianist, and percussionist. She is currently a year 9 student in Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School (VCASS). She is studying composition from a renowned Australian Composer Tony Gould, piano from Glenn Riddle at VCASS, and orchestral percussion from Sergei Golovko at Australian Percussion Academy.
She started her composition journey in Yamaha Music Australia at the age of 6 when she entered into Junior Special Advanced Course after a successful audition. She loves interpreting music using either piano or marimba as there are a lot of different possibilities to perform the music. As a composer, she gets a lot of inspirations from different composers through understanding the different genre of music.
In her music performance, she was awarded an Associate Diploma in Music performance (Piano) from Australian Music Examinations Board (AMusA Piano) in 2019 and Associate Diploma in Orchestral Percussion from Trinity College London (ATCL Orchestral Percussion) in 2020. She was first place winners in Music Society Victoria Piano Competition (DES Stevenson Award for 12 years and under in 2016 and EDA Schurmann Memorial Award for 15 years and under in 2020), first place winner in Australian Marimba Competition (Australian and New Zealand Student section in 2019) and second place winner in Bendigo Leila Watson Music Championship in 2019. She was also winners in multiple metropolitan/regional Eisteddfod Competitions and different international online piano competitions (e.g., WPTA Singapore International Piano Competition 2019, Brussels Grand Prize Virtuoso International Music Competition 2019, Canadian International Music Competition 2020, etc.)
Her major achievement comes from her composition. In Australia, she was winners of Australian Children Music Foundation (ACMF) National Songwriting Competition (Instrumental category) in 3 consecutive years from 2015 to 2017. She was awarded Tony Dorembus Memorial Original Composition Award from Boroondara Eisteddfod in 2 consecutive years from 2017 to 2018. In 2019, she was one of the youngest selected composers in Artology Fanfare Composer Competition. Recently she received special awards (for ensemble/orchestral work and Female Composer Award) from QMTA Composers’ Competition. Internationally, she was first prize winners for 5 years (namely “Waltz in C major” in 2016, “Ice Skating” in 2017, “Holiday” in 2019, “Theme and Variations” in 2020, and “Consciousness 2.0” in 2021) and second prize winner (“Le moment” in 2018) in Golden Key Music Festival Piano Composition Competition. In 2016, she performed her winning piece “Waltz in C major” in a World Composer Recital in Vienna Erhbar Hall. Many of her performances and compositions can be found in her YouTube channel called “Jasmine Melbourne”.
Composition Inspiration
My work ‘Encore’ is my 2nd fanfare piece. Since I could not go to live concerts during lockdown, I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos and improvising on piano. During this time, I composed a piece called 2020 for an ensemble with piano, strings and timpani. It is a collection of some of my motifs, including the one I used for this fanfare. When I was gathering ideas, I found that one section stood out the most as it was medley of 2 of the beginning motifs. To connect them all together, I gathered inspiration from piano concertos (as that was my previous intention when composing 2020), and a Disney princess game that I loved watching and playing when I was little. I loved the warm and enchanted sounds and used them in my piece. The key is C minor, as I made it more straightforward than my previous fanfare. My composition starts off with an offbeat melody from the brass, then there is a sequence with a countermelody from the strings. I also added snare drum to make it drive more. To finish the tension, I used a Phrygian scale with flat 5 (or A flat major scale starting on 7th).