Contest winners show their stuff

Alastair Moock, songwriter. photo by Jim Mitchell After being challenged by 149 other songwriters, then going head-to-head with four other finalists, Alastair Moock emerged as the winner of the Sisters Folk Festival Songwriting Contest on Saturday, September 11.

Moock, from Boston, Masachusetts, won out over some tough competition with a wide range of experience.

He received a $700 cash prize for his efforts.

The other finalists were Jim Faddis (Nine Mile Falls, Washington), Elisa Korenne (Brooklyn, New York), Claudia Russell (Berkeley, California), and Johnny Smorgasbord (Bend, Oregon).

Each entrant was allowed to submit a minimum of two songs, a maximum of three. Folk festival personnel pre-screened the applicants down to the five applicants.

Those five appeared competitively on Bronco Billy's Stage, then were invited back to perform in a more relaxed non-competitive session.

The criteria for selecting the winner were originality and uniqueness, memorability, song structure, and prosody (the fit of words to music). In addition, for the finals, the performance (the ability to get the song across) was a critical consideration.

Moock aspires to be a full-time performer. He spent his early musical years in Boston, where he recently returned after a stint in Iowa City, Iowa.

The Boston Globe calls him "one of the town's best and most adventurous songwriters."

Moock has toured throughout America and twice to Norway and has released two albums.

He was an award winner in three other songwriting contests this year before coming to Sisters.

In a smaller but equally intense competition, each entrant in the Deering Banjo Pickin' Contest, held at Angeline's Bakery, had five minutes to prove their mastery of the instrument.

In the end, according to organizer Chuck McCabe, "Portland's Alex Truax was, hands-down, the number-one picker of the lot."

Sunday, 15-year-old Truax treated the Main Stage crowd to an example of not only his picking, but his singing as well, as he accepted a new Deering Goodtime Banjo as first prize.

Truax played and sang with the poise of a veteran.