In addition to the guidelines and requirements stated above, the AMP Juries have provided the following considerations to help shape a more successful submission:

1. Don’t worry about how ‘Jewish’ you are (or are not) before considering a submission to one of the prizes. People from all faiths, backgrounds and affiliations are equally welcome to apply their artistry, creativity and musicality in response to the Prize themes. In fact, one of the Foundation’s hopes for AMP is to generate productive intercultural understandings through a rich consideration of what Jewish music is and can be.
2. Carefully consider the guiding notes in addressing the questions and reflections on what constitutes Jewish music. A successful submission will suggest an interesting, appropriate yet compelling potential response to these questions and reflections in the shape of a musical work. We are calling on composers to extend their own creativity, inquisitiveness and thoughtfulness in seeking out this potential response. It also calls for a deeper, purposeful and conscious consideration of Jewish values and experiences that extend beyond simple representations of Jewish people or subjects, or simple incorporations of Jewish secular, sacred and/or traditional musical materials, depending upon the guideline requirements.
3. A submission package must be conceptually and musically balanced. Strong, wonderful musical examples accompanied by an insubstantial and/or ill-researched proposal or explanatory note will not succeed within the competition. The inverse is also true: a strong proposal and/or explanatory note will not compensate for weak musical examples. The two must go hand-in-hand.
4. Please note that the quality of submitted scores and recordings greatly affects the Jury’s ability to evaluate your application. Please be sure that submitted scores are easily legible and that recordings are as clear and undistorted as possible. If the quality of the score or sound is so low that it’s difficult to ascertain the artistic product, this will impact an evaluation.
5. In the case of the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, please be certain that the CV and musical examples demonstrate an ability to compose for the available musical forces described in 2020 Prize guidelines (i.e. chamber music for large forces up to 16 musicians.)

Once received, submissions are first registered and screened by our staff for eligibility and completeness.

Submissions are then pre-screened by a small team of staff and Jury members to evaluate their fit and relevancy to Prize themes. Those submissions that clear the pre-screening stage are then delivered as qualified submissions to the respective AMP Jury for their evaluation.

The Jury will review and grade the qualified submissions using the following three main criteria: Artistic Merit, Technical Merit and Thematic Fit. These criteria are separately weighted based on their level of importance to arrive at a score out of 100 for each evaluated submission.

Artistic Merit (70 points)
This is the most important criteria the Jury applies in evaluating each submission. It is directly tied to the composer’s proven ability to write original concert music of high artistic merit.

The Jury will determine:

• the level of creativity displayed in the conceptual, formal/structural and musical ideas of each qualified submission;
• the ability of the submitted musical examples to sustain a listener’s attention over their entire length;
• the level of authenticity and distinctiveness displayed in the composer’s artistic voice;
• the composer’s ability to work successfully within the complex format of chamber music for large forces (i.e. up to 16 musicians); and
• the composer’s capacity to generate high quality, original and professional musical material based on the AMP guidelines for instrumentation and duration.

Technical Merit (20 points)
The Jury will evaluate each qualified submission with the aim of identifying how well thought-out it is in regards to its use of rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, texture, dynamics and orchestration. They will evaluate these elements especially in regards to how well they express or positively reinforce the composer’s purpose and intentions for the proposed or submitted work, and as they relate to the objectives of the Azrieli Music Prizes.

Thematic Fit (10 points)
The Jury will evaluate whether the qualified submission offers a topical and original fit to the objectives of the Azrieli Music Prizes based on the approved guidelines of what can constitute Jewish music.

For the purpose of the Azrieli Music Prizes, the Azrieli Foundation defines ‘Jewish music’ as broadly as possible, taking into account the rich and diverse history of Jewish musical traditions, as well as music by Jews and non-Jews, which may be said to incorporate a Jewish thematic or Jewish musical influence.

Jewish themes may vary broadly, and can include biblical, historical, liturgical, secular and/or folk elements.

Fundamentally, the Foundation encourages an understanding of Jewish music as deeply rooted in history and tradition, yet forward-moving and dynamic. As such, it encourages themes and content drawn from contemporary Jewish life and experience.

Jewish music can*:

• be based purposefully and consciously on musical materials traditionally perceived as belonging to a specifically “Jewish melos” – sacred or secular;
• incorporate actual liturgical melodies or secular folk tunes from any one of numerous distinct geographic or cultural Jewish traditions;
• be based on Jewish historical or biblical subjects, events, or characters, or Jewish legends or literary themes;
• include or be founded upon Jewish texts or Jewish literature (prose, poetry, or drama);
• incorporate specifically Jewish languages such as Hebrew, Yiddish, or Ladino;
• depict in musical terms, with or without sung or spoken text, visual images of Jewish connection (landscapes in the land of Israel, for example) or scenes of Jewish religious or folk life (a Hassidic gathering, a Yemenite Jewish wedding, or daily life of Jews in an eastern international market town, or shtetl, to cite three examples);
• express moods of Jewish life-cycle events or holy days;
• give voice to Judaic ideas or concepts; and/or
• have been composed expressly for a Jewish commemoration, celebration, ceremony, or other occasion conceived in some way to represent the nature of that occasion.

*excerpted from Dr. Neil W. Levin, The Milken Archive of Jewish Music