FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | February 3, 2012

Contact: Jill Chukerman | 773.525.3974 | jchuk@rcn.com

Highland Park student musician Jonas Tarm, who studies with the Music Institute of Chicago’s prestigious Academy for gifted pre-college musicians, has won first place in a distinguished, 50-state classical music composition competition, the 24,000-member Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) announced this week.

Tarm, an 18-year-old senior at Highland Park High School, travels next month to New York City, where his winning entry, a Latin-tinged chamber work called “Las Ruinas Circulares,” will be performed at MTNA’s annual convention. For winning MTNA’s senior-division composition contest, Tarm receives $2,000. Composers Jeff Smith in New York, Wynn-Anne Rossi in Minnesota and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead Composer-in-Residence Augusta Read Thomas served as judges.

Tarm’s piece for violin, piano, cello and flute is a musical interpretation of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Circular Ruins,” about a man who sets out to dream another human being into existence—only to realize that he himself is a figment of someone’s dream.

Also this year, the Estonian-born Tarm, who has lived in the Chicago area since he was 10, won the Music Institute’s Generation Next Young Composer’s Competition and the Illinois Music Educators Association’s composition competition. His compositions and violin playing have also been featured on classical music station WMFT’s program Introductions. Tarm’s winning piece can be heard on WFMT’s website: http://blogs.wfmt.com/introductions/2012/01/21/530/