About the competition

The Contemporary Piano Competition was  launched  in 1985 by Dr. Janice Kay Hodges, who was on the piano faculty at UT San Antonio and was the President of the San Antonio Music Teachers Association at the time of her death in 1990.  It was then that the competition was renamed as the Janice Kay Hodges Contemporary Piano Competition. 

Dr. Hodges saw an educational need for pre-college pianists. She wanted the language of contemporary music to be as familiar to students as the music of Bach or Beethoven. Her efforts have been carried on by UTSA faculty and SAMTA members, many who were her former students, and the competition has now been active for over 40 years. The in-person competition is for piano students who live in the state of Texas and 2026 will be the first year that the online competition will be open to students outside of Texas. 

Each year, new repertoire is added under a new theme. Previous themes have included Piano Music by Women, Piano Music from Africa and the African Diaspora, Latin American Composers, South Texas Composers, and Music Written Since 1985. Students have three choices of repertoire for each grade level and new pieces are kept on the repertoire list for three years.