Established in 2016, the Ise-Shima International Composition Competition recognizes composers of outstanding achievement who have produced significant achievements in the field of composition.
Edgerton received the award for his sinfonietta Rust, a composition inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Rust is a sinfonietta that channels the novel’s dense, layered materiality and its irreverent fusion of high and low art. Rather than merely illustrating Pynchon’s imagery, Edgerton constructs a sonic architecture that parallels the novel’s encyclopedic scope and stylistic volatility. The title, drawn from a passage evoking “hunters’ boots and rifle bolts in oiled keyways,” signals a world of mechanical ritual and decaying memory—an atmosphere that permeates the work’s five movements.
Rather than juxtaposing disparate materials, Edgerton integrates Rust with them through a principle of concordant balance: complex textures are not data-dull but information-rich, structured, and performatively exacting. The result is a kind of sonic treatise on contemporary technique, where the physicality of sound production becomes a metaphor for the novel’s own obsession with entropy, transformation, and control.
On this connection, Edgerton writes:
“Rust is not decay. Rust is becoming. It is the slow grammar of entropy, the blue-shadowed dawn of metal’s memory, a sour smell of rolling-stock absence, a breath held too long in the lungs of a machine. And the boots—they do not march. They remember. Each step a recursion, each heelstrike a cipher: B-sub-N-for-Närrisch, nearly about to equal A, nearly about to vanish.”
Read more about Rust and listen here
Motivation for the Grand Prize
“The grand prize was awarded to Michael Edward Edgerton, whose composition distinguishes itself through exceptional originality and outstanding artistic quality. His work demonstrates a remarkable capacity to convey complex ideas with extraordinary clarity and depth through musical expression,” writes the Ise-Shima Art Company on their Facebook page.
About the Competition
The Ise-Shima Art Company is gaining recognition as a meaningful international music competition, as it consistently honors high-quality compositions from diverse global voices. Founded in 2016 as a composition workshop, its mission is to connect artists and non-artists in the scenic Ise-Shima region of Japan.
The competition welcomes entries from around the world and received over 600 submissions in its first edition. Winners receive certificates printed on traditional IseWashi paper, crafted by Taihou Wasi Kougyou K.K.—a company that has been making sacred paper for the revered Ise Jingu shrine since 1899.