Daniela Blau Wins peermusic Latin Scholarship

Porfirio Piña, Director of the BMI Foundation’s peermusic Latin Scholarship, has announced that Daniela Blau is the winner of the fifth annual peermusic Latin Scholarship, a competition for original Latin songs and instrumental compositions. Blau, a 21-year-old native of Costa Rica and a student at Boston’s Simmons College, received a $5,000 scholarship for her song, Y Si No Lo Sabes. The award was presented onstage during the BMI Latin Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles on June 12.

The scholarship competition was established through the generosity of Ralph Peer II and the peermusic companies and was open to students between the ages of 16 and 24 attending colleges and universities in the United States and Puerto Rico. The 2008 jury included BMI’s Delia Orjuela, peermusic’s Ramon Arias, Sony ATV Music Publishing’s Claribel Cuevas, Univision Radio’s Elizabeth Rodriguez and Beto Cuevas Manager’s Maribel Schumacher. Porfirio Piña, Director of the Foundation’s peermusic Latin Scholarship and Senior Director of Latin Music at BMI in New York, oversaw the selection and judging process.

Founded by Ralph S. Peer in 1928, peermusic is a global network of music publishing companies operating from 33 offices in 27 countries. There are over a quarter of a million titles in the company’s catalogue, and songs that vary from country, blues, jazz and pop to Latin, concert and rock.