ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards

ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards

The ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards are granted annually to jazz composers under 30 who are at the earliest stages of their careers. The program was established in 2002 and carries Herb Alpert’s name in recognition of The Herb Alpert Foundation’s multi-year funding commitment; additional support comes from The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund. Recipients are chosen through a juried national competition and receive cash awards.

This is not a general creative-development grant, a commission, a travel fund, or tuition support. It is a composition award decided on one submitted piece: a score or chart, an mp3 of that same piece, and a completed online application.

Current status: between cycles

The most recently published application period ran from Monday, November 3, 2025 through Monday, December 1, 2025 at 11:59 PM ET. That cycle is finished. The ASCAP Foundation announced its recipients in a press release dated March 31, 2026, titled “The ASCAP Foundation Announces 2026 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award Recipients” — comfortably ahead of the April 30, 2026 notification date the official rules had promised.

One naming quirk trips people up, so it is worth stating outright: ASCAP names each round for the year the awards are given, not the year applications are taken. The window that opened November 3, 2025 and closed December 1, 2025 produced the awards ASCAP calls the 2026 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. So when a listing somewhere refers to the “2026 awards,” it is describing a competition whose deadline has already passed, not an upcoming one. ASCAP has not announced a successor round, so no future cycle year or deadline belongs in this entry.

The ASCAP Foundation has not posted an application window for a successor cycle. Its official program materials retain the November 3 – December 1, 2025 dates under “Award Period,” list the age cutoff as “under the age of 30 as of December 1, 2025,” show the April 30, 2026 notification date, and carry an application prompt reading “Submission deadline is December 1, 2025 at 11:59pm ET.” The online application form also retains the closed cycle’s instructions. Treat those materials as the record of the completed round, not as an open call. Do not use a projected date from a scholarship aggregator or infer a new deadline from the program’s annual history.

About that HTTP 403

The official application URL returns HTTP 403 to a plain automated request. That response is a request-access problem, not evidence that the ASCAP destination has been replaced: the program and application URLs are still the official links for this award. If you need to inspect the form, open the destination in a normal browser and confirm whether ASCAP has posted a successor cycle.

At a glance

What the last cycle actually looked like

The 2026 announcement is the most concrete picture of the award’s scale. Fifteen composers received awards: Miranda I. Agnew, Sam Chandler, Hannah Claire, Rafael Enciso, Ariel Sha Glassman, Sean Kiefer, Amos Landau, Erik Larsen, Aditi Malhotra, Hannah Marks, Will Robinson, Denin Slage-Koch, Izzy Stone, Teresa (Naphatraphee) Um, and Immanuel Wilkins. Six more received Honorable Mention: Bella Amada, Nick Mikhail, Klara Poznachowska, Noah A. Silver, Thomas Wandborg, and Henry Zucarello.

The award recipients ranged in age from 18 to 30 and lived in Brooklyn and New York City, Duluth, Dallas, Cedar Falls, Boston, Rochester, Knoxville, Denton, Chicago, and West Lake Village, with several originally from outside the United States — Chiang Mai, New Delhi, and Jerusalem. The Honorable Mention list ran from 16 to 28 and added Philadelphia, Wayne (New Jersey), Los Angeles, and Massachusetts, with origins in Warsaw and Hjørring. Three ASCAP composer members judged that round: Lauren Elizabeth Baba, Aakash Mittal, and Camille Thurman.

Two things follow from that list. First, the cohort is genuinely national and not concentrated in one conservatory pipeline. Second, an 18-year-old and a 30-year-old can both take an award, and a 16-year-old placed in Honorable Mention, so being early in your training is not disqualifying — the piece is what gets read.

The Foundation also notes that past recipients have gone on to Grammy recognition, naming Matthew Whitaker and Remy LeBoeuf in 2026 and Zaccai Curtis, Emily Bear, and Pascal LeBoeuf in 2025.

What you get

Recipients receive a monetary prize. The Foundation does not publish a dollar figure anywhere in its rules or on its program page: the total prize value to be shared among recipients is set at the Foundation’s sole discretion, and the number of recipients and the value of each individual prize are set by the Foundation and the judges. Do not budget around a number you found on a third-party listing.

The credential is a real part of the value. A juried national award with a two-decade history and named recipients published in an ASCAP press release is something you can put in a bio, a school application, a grant narrative, or a commissioning pitch. What the award does not include: feedback, mentorship, a performance, a commission, publication, or travel money.

Eligibility

Check this before you touch the music. The rules are specific and mostly binary.

Age. You must be at least 13 at the time of entry and under 30 as of the cycle’s closing date. In the last cycle that test date was December 1, 2025 — the same day the window closed. The closing date is doing double duty as the age cutoff, so a birthday a week later does not help you.

Residency and status. You must be a U.S. citizen, a U.S. permanent resident, or an enrolled student holding a valid and current U.S. student visa. The rules also void the award outside the fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The application asks you to select exactly one of those three citizenship categories.

Performing rights organization. As of the notification period you must be either an ASCAP writer member in good standing, unaffiliated with any PRO, or a member of an international PRO whose works are licensed through ASCAP. If you are affiliated with BMI, SESAC, or GMR, you do not fit the rule as written. The form makes you certify this with a required checkbox before you can submit.

Repeat recipients. Anyone who has already received three or more Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards is not eligible. Recipients of other ASCAP Foundation awards remain eligible but must submit a newly created work written within the last three years.

Minors. If the entrant is 13 to 17 (or under the age of majority where they live), a parent or legal guardian must complete and submit the online application on the entrant’s behalf, sign and upload the Parental Consent Form, and upload a photo ID. ASCAP explicitly asks that a minor’s own email address and phone number not appear on the application or the consent form. Build extra time into your schedule for this — a missing signature or ID stops the submission cold.

Work rules

One original jazz composition, published or unpublished. No arrangements. No sampling. No co-written submissions. The work must be entirely your own and must have been written within the three years before the date of submission, and you certify that with a required checkbox on the form.

One submission per entrant. If the Foundation receives more than one from you, only the first qualifies; the rest are disqualified. There is no revise-and-resubmit, so treat your first upload as final.

All uploaded materials must separately bear your name.

For vocal compositions setting text or a translation of text, you must show the text is in the public domain or is used with written permission from the author, translator, publisher, or estate. The application handles this with dropdowns — for text, translation, and samples separately, you pick “I have written permission,” “I am the author,” “Public Domain,” “I don’t have permission,” or “No” — and gives you upload slots for the evidence. Answering “I don’t have permission” is not a neutral answer.

What the application form asks for

The online form is longer than the three-item summary suggests. Have this ready before you start:

• Affiliation certification — the required PRO checkbox described above.
• Entrant details — name, phone, email (entered twice), citizenship status, date of birth.
• Address and country.
• Music education — up to three institutions, each with a principal instructor.
• Chart/score file — PDF only, maximum 250 MB.
• Audio file — mp3 only, maximum 250 MB.
• Parental Consent Form and parent photo ID — for minors; the ID accepts PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPG, JPEG, PNG, or GIF.
• Bio — a URL or a short biography, capped at 500 characters.
• Title of composition.
• Text, translation, and sample clearance — the dropdowns and evidence uploads above.
• Original work — a yes/no declaration.
• Instrumentation — generic descriptions are fine for large ensembles, e.g. “full jazz orchestra.”
• Duration — hours, minutes, seconds, in 0:00:00 format; enter zero for hours.
• Performance history, award history, performing ensemble.
• Terms and conditions — several required checkboxes covering the Official Rules, the three-year recency certification, and your age or guardian status, plus a reCAPTCHA.

The bio field’s 500-character cap and the education section’s three-institution limit are the two fields most likely to force rewriting on deadline night. Draft them in advance.

How the judging works

Each eligible submission is judged by a panel of ASCAP composer members on the significance and overall artistry and compositional elements of the work. The Foundation selects the judges at its sole discretion, and the decisions of the Foundation and its judges — including who receives an award — are final and binding.

That criterion rewards the composition, not the production budget. A clear chart and an honest recording of a well-made piece will read better than a slick mix of a thin one. Entry is free: the rules state that no purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win.

Preparing the score and the mp3

The score is a PDF, so check how it actually renders after export, not just how it looks in your notation software. Confirm title, composer name, instrumentation, transpositions, tempo markings, rehearsal letters, repeats, endings, dynamics, and articulations. If the piece uses a vamp, an open solo section, a flexible order, or a conducted cue, mark it — jazz notation leaves room for interpretation, but the chart should still show deliberate composition rather than an unfinished sketch.

The mp3 should let the panel hear the piece without fighting the recording. A live take, a studio take, a rehearsal recording, or an electronic realization is acceptable; the rules ask for “an electronic realization or recording of the musical work.” Listen to the exported file end to end and check for clipping, dropouts, missing sections, and silence at the tail. The most common failure is version drift: you revise the score after recording, or re-render the audio after exporting the score, and the two stop matching. Compare them one last time before uploading.

A realistic preparation schedule

Once ASCAP posts a new window, work backward from the close:

• Six weeks out — confirm age, status, and PRO eligibility, and choose the piece.
• Four weeks out — finish the score and resolve notation ambiguities.
• Three weeks out — produce the mp3 and check it against the score bar by bar.
• Two weeks out — for minors, get the consent form signed and the parent photo ID scanned; for vocal works, secure the text or translation permission in writing.
• One week out — draft the bio, the instrumentation description, the duration, and the performance and award history.
• Two days out — submit, and save the confirmation.

Submitting on the final evening is a bad trade. Upload portals slow down, 250 MB files fail partway, browser sessions expire, and guardians and rights holders are not available on demand. Because only your first submission counts, a rushed first attempt is not something you can fix with a second one.

Common mistakes

Choosing the wrong piece is the big one. With a single entry allowed, the newest work is not automatically the right work. Pick the piece that is eligible, complete, original, legible on paper, convincing in audio, and representative of how you actually write.

Rights problems come next: a sampled groove, a copyrighted poem, a translated lyric, or an arrangement of someone else’s tune. The rules exclude all of those unless you hold and can show written permission.

Then there is file hygiene — wrong format, oversized file, missing name on an upload, an mp3 that stops early. And finally, do not read the still-visible 2025 dates on ASCAP’s own pages as an open call. The form renders; that does not mean the cycle is live.

FAQ

Is the award open right now? No. The last published window closed December 1, 2025, and recipients were announced March 31, 2026. No new window has been posted.

Is it only for college students? No. Eligibility is based on age, U.S. status, and PRO affiliation. The 2026 cohort included an 18-year-old award recipient and a 16-year-old Honorable Mention.

Why does the “2026” round have a 2025 deadline? ASCAP names each round for the year the awards are announced. The applications taken between November 3 and December 1, 2025 produced the 2026 awards, published March 31, 2026.

Can I submit more than one piece? No. Only your first submission qualifies; later ones are disqualified.

Can I submit a co-written piece or an arrangement? No to both. The work must be entirely your own original composition.

Does the work have to be unpublished? No — published or unpublished both qualify, as long as it is original, in the jazz genre, and written within the last three years.

Can I use a MIDI realization? Yes. The rules accept an mp3 of an electronic realization or a recording.

What if I am under 18? Your parent or legal guardian submits the application for you and uploads the signed Parental Consent Form plus a photo ID. Keep your own email and phone off both documents.

How much is the prize? ASCAP does not publish a figure. It is a cash award whose total value, recipient count, and per-recipient share are set at the Foundation’s discretion.

Is there an entry fee? No. The rules state that no purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win.

The link gives me a 403 — is it dead? No. It returns 403 to automated fetches and 200 in a normal browser.

Next steps

Use the gap between cycles. Finish the score, cut a clean recording, write the 500-character bio, note the piece’s completion date and instrumentation, and settle any text or sample permissions in writing. If you are a minor, talk to a parent or guardian now rather than in late November.

Then watch the official program page for a new application period and read the new cycle’s Official Rules before you rely on anything summarized here — dates, the age cutoff, and file limits are set per cycle by the Foundation. The clearest signal that a fresh round is live will be the “Award Period” line changing away from November 3 – December 1, 2025; until it does, the form you can reach is the closed cycle’s form.

Official links

• Program page and rules: The Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards
• Online application: ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards application
• Most recent results: The ASCAP Foundation Announces 2026 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award Recipients
• Questions: Cia Toscanini, Vice President, Concert Music — [email protected], 212.621.6329

Only ASCAP’s own pages are controlling. Aggregator listings for this award carry projected deadlines and prize figures that ASCAP has not published.