FORTVILLE — Mt. Vernon High School senior Ryan Dockery recently was chosen as one of three winners of Manchester University Music Department’s nationwide Young Composers Competition.
Dockery’s composition entitled “For You” was previewed in the Wine Recital Hall on March 28, along with the music of the other two winners, one from Wisconsin and one from Florida, as part of Manchester University’s New Music Festival, conducted the last weekend in March.
The festival featured new works in the area of choral music, chamber music, solo voice and electroacoustic.
Dockery is active in his school choir, as well as the Indianapolis Youth Chorale and the Indiana All-State Honor Choir. He is a volunteer at Ten West Center for the Arts in Fortville, where he has directed shows and musicals.
In his composition, “For You,” he employed techniques that oppose conventional rules of composition in order to support the message of the piece: God can take ugly, awkward, strange and confusing things and make them beautiful.
Dockery is a junior and plans to study chemical engineering at Purdue.
