We are pleased to share that numerous graduate composers have won recent awards, residencies, commissions, and more. Read more about their accomplishments below -- congratulations to all!
Ty Bouque
Performances and Residencies:
- debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony in Glasgow
- solo concert at Maerzmusik Berlin
- quartet portrait at the Library of Congress
- Artist in Residence at Curtis Institute
Writing:
- new essay on parentheses and love in Cambridge University’s TEMPO
- chapter on Liza Lim in a forthcoming collection on opera by Australian women
- longform profile about touch and permission in the music of Chaya Czernowin for VAN Magazine
Rachel Chery
Awards:
- 2024-2025 Race and Society Incubator Fellowship
- 2025-2026 Pozen for Human Rights Fellowship
- 2024-2025 Grant Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression Research Grant to conduct research at the British and German National Archives in Summer 2025
- Wadmond Fund Grant in Spring 2025 Quarter
Presentations:
- American Historical Association Annual Conference in January 2025
- Created a panel and presented at the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Annual 2025 Conference in May 2025
- Caribbean Studies Association Conference in June 2025
- Society for Caribbean Studies Conference in July 2025
Patrick Dittamo
Awards:
- Song cycle Pika-Don came in second place for the 2024 American Prize in Composition, Vocal Chamber Music (College/University Division)
Presentations:
- “From Kit Krummhorns to 3D-Printed Cornetti and Serpents: The D.I.Y. Ethos in Early Music” at the American Musical Instrument Society Annual Meeting, Georgia Southern University, Savannah, Georgia (June 5, 2025)
- “The End of Orpheus: Reflections on the Life Cycle of Artisan Instrument Makers” at the Orpheus Project Symposium, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (May 18, 2025)
- “Exhibiting the Medieval Musical Past: Replicas in Turn of the Century Instrument Collections” at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies, held by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 8, 2025)
- “Punitive Instruments?: Pre-Digital Virality and the Appeal of Pseudohistory” at the American Musicological Society Midwest Chapter Fall Meeting, hosted online by the University of Missouri (October 13, 2024)
- “From Kit Krummhorns to 3D-Printed Cornetti and Serpents: The D.I.Y. Ethos in Early Music” at ZinkNet “Measuring the Past, Shaping the Future”: The Cornetto in the 21st Century, a conference hosted by the Haute École de Musique, Geneva, Switzerland (September 6, 2024)
Ronit Ghosh
Awards:
- Wayne Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching
- Stuart Tave Course Design Award
Nina Goodman
Awards:
- Wadmond Fund Grant for fieldwork in South Korea and Germany
Presentations:
- Presented a paper titled, "Sounding Out the Borderland: Ecological Sound Art at the Korean DMZ" at the Audible Futures Conference at Hanyang University in Seoul
Paul Novak
Awards:
- BMI Composer Award
- Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition, 1st Place in Division 1
- Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival Call for Scores, Winner
- MATA Festival Call for Works, Selected Composer
- Fondation Prince Pierre De Monaco – Coup de Coeur des Jeunes Melomanes Prize
- Ninth Planet New Music Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award, Winner
- Earplay Donald Aird Competition, Winner
Commissions:
- [new work] (2026 – upcoming) for saxophone quartet (8 – 12’), commissioned by Nois Saxophone Quartet
- [new work] (2026 – upcoming) for string quartet (6 – 8’), commissioned by JACK Quartet and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
- [new work] (2026 – upcoming) for soprano and ensemble (10’), commissioned by Guarneri Hall
- nocturnes (2025 – upcoming) for piano four-hands (6 – 8’), commissioned by ZOFO Duo
- [new work] (2025 – upcoming) for speakers and quartet (8 – 12’), commissioned by Formosa Quartet
- hildegard dreams of a garden (2025) for chamber orchestra (7 – 12’), commissioned by Orchestra of St. Luke's
- variations with sand in the gears (2024) for singing cellist (7’), commissioned by Alexander Hersh, cello and Nova Linea Musica
- imaginary inventions (2024) for string quartet (15’), commissioned by Balourdet Quartet and the Barlow Foundation
Residencies/Festivals:
- Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Young Composer Project (2026 – upcoming)
- MacDowell Artist in Artist-in-Residence Program, Fellow (2026 – upcoming)
- Orchestra of St. Luke’s DeGaetano Composition Institute (2025 — upcoming)
- I—Park Foundation Artist-in-Residence Program, Fellow (2025 -- upcoming)
- Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Residency Fellow with Balourdet Quartet (2024)
- Aspen Music Festival, Composition Fellow (2024)
Gabriel Novak
Awards:
- Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Featured composer & finalist for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot at Indiana University Bloomington
Benjamin Martin
Awards:
- Recipient of a 2025 BMI Award for the piece Unfurling Dances. Additionally, said piece was selected for an American Composers Orchestra EarShot Reading in 2026.
Commissions and Performances:
- Piece Ladders Cross the Blue Sky in a Wheel of Fire was selected for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago Fellows' annual call for scores as one of six pieces programmed out of over 200 submissions nation-wide and was performed by the Fellows at Symphony Center
- Commissioned by Sing Me a Story, Make a Wish Illinois, and Lake Forest College to make a new choral-orchestral work honoring the journey of a child's cancer diagnosis and eventual remission by incorporating her own autobiographical account of her experience into music
- Piece where we were was selected from a call for scores to be performed at NUNC!6, a biannual new music conference hosted at Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music
- One of the winners of Roots in the Sky's call for composers, and have been commissioned to write them a new choral piece to be performed in August of this year in Bozeman, MT
Audrey Slote
Presentations:
- Society for Music Theory, Jacksonville, FL (November 7-10): a paper entitled “Democratized Form: Collage and Cohesion in the Music of Bon Iver"
- South Central Society for Music Theory, New Orleans, LA (March 14): a paper entitled “Groove States: Loops, Layers, and Shifting Subjectivities in Solange’s A Seat at the Table.”
- Theorizing African American Music, Atlanta, GA (June 5-7): a paper entitled “Groove Subjectivity and Black Indie Minimalism in Solange’s A Seat at the Table.”
Podcast Appearances:
- Podcast episode “Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening II and the Sounds of Afrofuturist Theory” is forthcoming on SMT-Pod (release date: June 26)
- Featured as a guest speaker on Lydia Bangura's Her Music Academia podcast
Kari Watson
Albums:
- Release of album enclosures on Sawyer Editions in January, 2025, with premier show at Tusk, Chicago with Katinka Kleijn (recieved Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp Recognition, January, 2025)
Commissions and Performances:
- EU premier of enclosures, for chamber ensemble and electronics at the Donaueschingen Festival in Donaueschingen, DE in October 2024.
- Yarn Wire commission for Currents Series, SYNTHETICS, for piano and percussion quartet and electronics premiered May 2025 at Roulette in NYC
- Upcoming premiers of For Jen Torrence, for solo percussionist and multimedia, and twinning, for violin duo and DMX lights at the Darmstadt Festival in July, 2025
- if/then for solo cello and electronics, premier and seminar presentation at Concordia College with cellist Eduard Teregulov
- Premier and Performance with Grossman Ensemble, OSCILLATIONS, for large ensemble, modular synthesizer, and electronics
- Florasonics installation at the Lincoln Park Conservatory - mixing and spatialization of a 28 minute installation installed in the LPC's Fern Room from May 18th to August 31st, 2025
Fellowships and Residencies:
- Line Upon Line Winter Composer's Festival Composition Fellow, premier and performance of six chimeras for three performers
- Visiting artist at School of the Art Institute's Art & Technology and Sound Practices Program - October, 2024
Justin Weiss
Awards:
- ISCM/League of Composers Composition Competition, Winner
- Composers Guild of New Jersey, Commission Funding Recipient
- RED NOTE Music Festival Chamber Composition Competition, Finalist
- Contemporary Art Music Project Call for Scores, Selected Composer
- Ear Taxi Festival, Commissioned Composer
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship
Commissions:
- Akropolis Reed Quintet
- KAIA String Quartet and Soprano (Ear Taxi Festival)
- Aspen Contemporary Ensemble
- Aspen Conductors Orchestra
- Upcoming Project for Piano Solo
Festivals:
- Aspen Music Festival, Composition Fellow, Summer 2025
- RED NOTE Music Festival, March 2025
Have accomplishments you'd like to share? Contact Sophia Janevic (sjanevic@uchicago.edu) with information.