We are pleased to share that numerous graduate students have won recent awards, residencies, commissions, and more. Read more about their accomplishments below—congratulations to all!
Ty Bouque
Performances:
- sang at Lincoln Center
- this summer, will be a headliner for the Time:Spans Festival in NYC, inaugurating a two-year project at the University of California San Diego recording the complete vocal music of Timothy McCormack
- this summer, will be a guest artist at Klangspuren Festival
Published Work:
- wrote two books on Liza Lim (for Bloomsbury and Wolke Verlag, both published in October of this year)
- published a chapter in a collection on operas by Australian women from Lyrebird Press
Residencies:
- artist residency with Kelley Sheehan at the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg
Rachel Chery
Published Works:
- Co-authored an article with Jonah Francese that was officially published in the Journal of Sports and Society
Fellowships:
- Pozen Center for Human Rights Fellow
Presentations:
- Presented at the American Historical Association Conference
- Presented at the Caribbean Intensities Conference
- Will be presenting at the Society for Caribbean Studies conference this June
Other:
- I planned and hosted a graduate student Caribbean studies conference at Cardiff University with the support of the department's Wadmond fund
Nina Goodman
Awards:
- Cathy Heifetz Award
Grants and Fellowships:
- Fulbright US Student Grant
- DAAD Research Grant (Declined)
- Association for Recorded Sound Collections Research Grant
- UChicago Center for East Asian Studies Dissertation Research Grant
- UChicago Global Research Travel Grant
Jack Herscowitz
Commissions and Performances:
- a little moth slipped through the cracks premiered by Apply Triangle (The Dimenna Center, Manhattan, 2025)
- a place without language or streets performed by Nick Ritter at the TUTTI Festival (Denison University, OH, 2026)
- Sound Design for Sam Kann's MOUTHPIECE (Life World, Brooklyn, 2026)
- Performance of el instante centellea for piano at Dog Star Orchestra Festival (Los Angeles, 2026)
- NEW WORK (Sound Design) for Lisa Banta's Alice C. Cole Fellowship Installation at Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA, 2026)
- NEW WORK for viola duo commissioned by Sarah Plum and Rose Wollman (Chicago, 2027)
- Performance at High Desert Soundings (Joshua Tree, CA, 2026)
- Many performances in basements, lofts, living rooms, garages, churches, galleries, and dirty concrete rooms with puddles in the corners (Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Bowling Green, Akron Cincinnati, Seattle, Chicago, Ithaca, 2025-2026)
Albums:
- el instante centellea released on Zoomin' Night (Beijing, 2025)
Residencies:
- Pedvale International Artist Residency at Pedvale Open Air Art Museum (Talsi Municipality, Latvia, 2026)
Baldwin Giang
Awards:
- Henri Lazarof International Commission Prize, 2026
Ronnie Malley
Published Works:
- Literature review on Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media (Brahim El Guabli and Mostafa Hussein) published in Sephardic Horizons
Performances:
- Co-curated, consulted, and performed on a touring program titled "O' Jerusalem" for the Grammy award-winning Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra. Played to sold out audiences in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, and London, UK at the renowned St. Martin in the Fields church. There were many great reviews: Chicago Classical Review; Arts Desk (London).
Presentations/Workshops:
- Presented a workshop on "The Middle East, North Africa, and Medieval Spain: Music and Languages at the Crossroads of Convivencia" and gave a performance of my original solo play, Ziryab, The Songbird of Andalusia at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Varshini Narayanan (Teaching Fellow)
Albums:
- Released the debut album with my Indo-jazz trio, The Amarkalam Project (available here!)
Grants:
- Received a grant from the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, which will be used to support a symposium in the Music Department next fall titled "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free."
Paul Novak
Awards:
- Composer-in-Residence, California Symphony (2026 – 2029)
- New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, Grand Prize (2026)
- Fromm Foundation Commission (2025)
- Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence, Finalist (2025)
- ASCAP Morton Gould Award (2026, 2025)
- BMI Composer Award (2025)
- Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award, 1st Place (2025)
- Left Coast Chamber Ensemble Composition Contest, Winner (2025)
- Ruth Crawford Seeger Composition Prize (2025)
Commissions:
- New York New Music Ensemble/Ensemble Dal Niente/Contemporary Art Music Project/Mayflower Arts (quadruple co-commission)
- [new work] for flute, violin, percussion (2027 — upcoming)
- California Symphony – [new work] for orchestra (2027 — upcoming)
- ~Nois Saxophone Quartet/Fromm Foundation – [new work] for saxophone quartet (2026 — upcoming)
- JACK Quartet/Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival – transcriptions in a funhouse mirror, vol. 1 for string quartet (2026)
- Balletcollective – no fog no bone no fluttering for piano/keyboard and percussion (2026)
- ZOFO Duo/405 Shrader Series – two dreams about water (2025) for piano four-hands
- Formosa Quartet/Guarneri Hall – every song has an unsung third stanza (2025) for string quartet and speakers
- Orchestra of St. Luke’s – hildegard dreams of a garden (2025) for chamber orchestra
Residencies/Festivals:
- Alarm Will Sound Mizzou International Composers Festival (2026 – upcoming)
- Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Composers Workshop (2026 – upcoming)
- Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Young Composer Project (2026 – upcoming)
- MacDowell Artist-in-Residence Program, Fellow (2026)
- I-Park Artist-in-Residence Program, Fellow (2025)
Notable Performances:
- new string quartet, JACK Quartet, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Santa Fe, NM
- forest migrations for orchestra, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Composers Workshop, Santa Cruz, CA [upcoming]
- Mycelium New Music with guest artist Pamela Z - Constellation, Chicago, IL
- hildegard dreams of a garden for orchestra, Westside Chamber Players, Sofia Ouyang, conductor, New York, NY
- hildegard dreams of a garden for orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Brad Lubman, conductor, DiMenna Center, New York, NY
- as the light begins to drift for sinfonietta, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Allen Tinkham, conductor, Chicago, IL (sinfonietta version)
- impossible inventions for string quartet - over 50 performances by Balourdet Quartet around the United States and Canada in 25/26, including Carnegie Hall, Seattle Chamber Music Society, and more. Also performed by Attacca Quartet, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and other string quartets.
- gardensongs for string quartet - performances by Varo Quartet around the Midwest, Alinea Quartet throughout Germany, Austria, and the UK
- seven dreams about my body for microtonal sextet - performances by International Contemporary Ensemble, Blackbox Ensemble, Illinois Modern Ensemble, and more
- excerpts of in progress song cycle when i was nine i couldn't walk performed by Blackbox Ensemble in New York
- entwining for small ensemble - performances around the US, and also in Korea
- prisms and mirrors for small ensemble - performances around the US, and also at Guadeamus Festival in the Netherlands
- every song has an unsung third stanza for string quartet - premiere by Formosa Quartet at Guarneri Hall
Audrey Slote
Presentations:
- Presented as a guest speaker at Niagara University in March, sharing research on the aesthetic and political impact of collaboration between Ye and Bon Iver
- Presented at Theorizing African American Music at Emory University in June 2025
- Presented at the joint meeting of AMS-SMT as part of an interdisciplinary special session that Slote put together with two awesome collaborators, Caleb Herrmann and Emily Schwitzgebel!
- Upcoming presentations at Music Theory Midwest in Wichita, KS later this month and SMT 2026 in Milwaukee this November
Podcast Appearances:
- Episode "Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II and the Sounds of Afrofuturist Theory" was published on SMT-Pod at the end of June 2025
Published Work:
- Signed a publishing contract for a forthcoming chapter, "Alien Superstar," in The Poetry of Beyoncé: 30 Essays on 30 Songs, edited by Michael Chasar and published by Duke University Press (2027 release).
Have accomplishments you'd like to share? Contact Sophia Janevic (sjanevic@uchicago.edu) with information.