Ensemble CONCEPT/21, Inc. (EC/21) leads a year-round pipeline that takes emerging composers in the South Bend area from pen to page to stage. Each season begins on the second Friday of September with Composition Day, when 30-40 high school students from across the region gather at Indiana University South Bend to learn compositional fundamentals, meet EC/21's professional musicians to learn how to write idiomatically for their instruments, and hear the full ensemble perform a work by an emerging composer from the previous season. Composition Day energizes students to begin writing for EC/21's regional call for scores, due January 31.

Between Composition Day and the January 31 deadline, students need sustained, individualized support to turn early ideas into finished, performance-ready scores. EC/21 provides this support through one-on-one mentorship with professional composition mentors and through free workshops open to student and community composers. Selected works then move to the stage: finalists' pieces are rehearsed alongside EC/21's professional ensemble and premiered at the season's culminating concert, April 9, 2027, at Joshi Performance Hall, IU South Bend, placing regional student composers alongside EC/21's core ensemble.

This request supports the mentorship and workshop stages of that pipeline: two online workshops ($300 each) offering practical, accessible instruction in composition technique and professional development to students throughout Northern Indiana and Michiana at no cost to them, and mentorship fees for four professional composition mentors ($100 each) who work individually with student composers as they draft and refine their call-for-scores submissions. For many of these students, this is their only access to individualized composition instruction and a guaranteed professional premiere — a rare, tangible pathway from a first pencil sketch to a concert hall stage in South Bend.