BRUNSWICK – The Bowdoin International Music Festival has received a grant of $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to support its 40th anniversary season in 2004. The funds will be used to support commissions of new works from several contemporary composers, all of whom have prior associations with the festival.

“The festival will celebrate 40 years of growth by investing in the things that have made it successful,” said founder Lewis Kaplan. “We’ll be presenting some of the favorite programs of the past, and commissioning new works to be performed in 2004.

Gia Comolli, a festival student in the early ’90s, is writing a concerto for violin and chamber orchestra. Prior commissions have included works for the Maine Arts Commission, the Daponte String Quartet, the Pennsylvania Arts Council and the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.

A Topsham resident, Comolli has received an individual artist fellowship award from the Maine Arts Commission. She teaches at the Portland Conservatory.

Since its founding in 1964, the Bowdoin Festival has provided gifted students of classical music with an opportunity to study new music, chamber music and instrumental technique under the direction of a distinguished faculty, and has sponsored performances of the full range of classical repertoire by internationally renowned musicians.