Doctoral student Ermir Bejo won the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award -- one of the most prestigious honors for composers 30 years old and younger.

Bejo was honored for his composition Opus 4 for solo piano. This fall, he will be a teaching fellow at UNT and will work on his dissertation, which will be his first chamber opera and a major composition for violin and piano. He plans to keep composing and work on scorefollower.com, a music resource he helped develop for composers and performers.

"I am very pleased and proud to have been chosen as a winner," Bejo says. "In the very competitive musical world, the award provides much-needed exposure to audiences who might have been previously unfamiliar with my work."