Maya Johnson and Isabella Nguyen have been selected as winners of the 2023-2024 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge, a joint initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT). Maya and Isabella will each receive a $2,500 scholarship provided by the National Music Publishers’ Association S.O.N.G.S. Foundation and a trip to New York, where their original song, “Live Before Life’s Gone,” will be performed in full orchestration at a special concert on Broadway.
Maya and Isabella are rising seniors at Mount St. Mary Academy where both are active in the theatre arts and forensics programs and members of the International Thespian Society. They also participate in the school’s award-winning choral ensemble, the Concert Belles, and have each been selected to the Arkansas Choral Directors Association All-State Choir multiple times.
“When we submitted our song back in December, we never thought it possible that we could win. We entered the competition to receive feedback and to participate in workshops with successful songwriters like Rob Rokicki and Joey Contreras with the hope that we would get advice on how to improve our writing for the rest of our original musical, Less Than Perfect,” Maya and Isabella said in a joint statement about their win. “When we got the call that ‘Live Before Life’s Gone’ was selected as one of seven winning songs out of over 90 that were submitted, we were absolutely shocked – and still are. We can’t wait for Winners Weekend and to work alongside professional composers, musicians and performers to bring our song to life and make connections that will hopefully become stepping stones to bigger things in the future.”
Maya and Isabella will travel to New York City in June with the six other winning songwriters to learn about process, technique and production while working with mentors and music directors to hone their orchestrations. The fully orchestrated and produced compositions will be performed by top-tier Broadway talent at a concert on Monday, June 17, at 7pm ET. This one-time event will be available to watch live and on-demand at arts.gov/songwriting and namt.org/challenge. In addition, all of the winning songs will be compiled into a songbook by Concord Theatricals, one of the world’s largest theatrical licensing and music publishing firms, and released at a future date.
“Developing musical theatre writers is at the heart of our mission, and working with these amazing high school students is a natural extension of who we are and what we do,” NAMT Executive Director Betsy King Militello said. “We have loved providing educational opportunities to all the wonderful applicants and can’t wait to spend the weekend immersed in musical theatre with the winners.”
The Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge is a prestigious program that provides high school students across the country with an unparalleled opportunity to develop and showcase their original musical compositions, which could become part of a full-scale musical theater production. Maya and Isabella’s piece, “Live Before Life’s Gone,” was one of seven winning songs chosen by a panel of leaders in the musical theater field out of 95 submissions from 113 students across 30 states. A demo of it and the other winning songs can be heard at https://namt.org/2024/05/meet-the-mtsc24-winners/.
“We are delighted to celebrate these winning songwriters in New York City in June,” NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson said. “The experience of working one-on-one with a dedicated mentor to develop their craft and learn more about the songwriting process is one that we hope will remain with these students for years to come. Thank you to our partners at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre for creating empowering opportunities for students at all stages of this program to develop their songwriting voice.”
