The 2024 Program Fellows
Madeline Clara Cheng (2023 David Stock Awardee) Madeline Clara Cheng is a composer, saxophonist, and pianist from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a 2023 YoungArts Award Winner, an ASCAP finalist, and a recipient of the ICEBERG New Music and Lift Up Our Voices scholarships. As an alumna of Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid's Luna Composition Lab, Madeline has been commissioned to compose choral works for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 150th anniversary May Festival as well as the UUCWC Crossing Chorale. Her compositions have also been performed by members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Norway’s Bergen International Festival, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Boston New Music Initiative, Ensemble for These Times, the Triple Helix Piano Trio, and the Julius Quartet. Madeline is an alumna of the Tanglewood Institute, for which she received a full scholarship, as well as the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program. She is currently studying composition at the University of Southern California as a Presidential Scholar. When she’s not composing, Madeline can be found music directing a show, learning about mythology and folklore, or designing escape rooms.
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Brittney Benton (2024 Leslie Bassett Graduate Award)Driven by storytelling and imagery, Brittney Benton's music takes you on a journey through a lush melodic and harmonic soundscape, filled with personality at every turn. Brittney holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition with a Minor in Music Technology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and is attending the Yale School of Music for her Masters in Music Composition. She is very interested in working outside of the concert hall, especially in the realm of video game music. Brittney’s music has been performed by the Bellevue Chamber Chorus, ZOFO, the Beo String Quartet, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, and more. In 2020, she was named the winner of PARMA Recordings “Summer 2020 Call For Scores”, and the winner of the Bellevue Chamber Chorus’ “Emerging Composer Competition” in 2021. In 2022, she was named one of the winners of Chicago a Capella’s “Her Voice Competition”. Recent composition festivals include the 2020 Charlotte New Music Festival and Connecticut Summerfest 2021. She also attended the inaugural Akropolis Chamber Music Institute (ACMI) in 2022. Her principal teachers include Cynthia Wong, Diego Vega, Jennifer Bellor, and Viet Cuong. She has attended masterclasses with Richard Danielpour, Michael Torke, Marc Mellits, Juan Pablo Contreras, and David Conte.
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Gage Lindsay (2024 David Stock Undergraduate Award)Gage Lindsay (b.1993) is currently pursuing a B.Mus. in Music Composition, a B.S. in Audio Recording & Music Production, and minors in Neuroscience and Film at Georgia State University where he studies composition under the tutelage of Dr. Nickitas Demos. His piece “You and Me Against the World” was recorded and performed by the New York based Unheard-of Ensemble in the Fall of 2023. He is an active member of the Georgia State University student chapter of the Society of Composers, Inc. Lindsay began his musical journey late due to extenuating circumstances involving a traumatic injury of a loved one. This event shaped his approach to music. He studies neuroscience to better understand how mental health effects the human condition and how music can portray a reflection of this struggle. To him, music is a humbling experience that teaches us how to appreciate the present.
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Thomas Misson (Julia Perry Award)Thomas Misson is an Australian, Hobart-based composer, pianist, teacher, and music journalist. Misson graduated with Bachelor of Music Composition with First Class Honours from the University of Tasmania in 2016 under the tutelage of Dr Maria Grenfell, Russell Gilmour and Don Kay. Misson also has a Masters in Music with a full scholarship from The University of Melbourne under the tutelage of Elliot Gyger and Katy Abbott, winning an MRC commission award in the process. He received a highly commended prize in the national Jean Bogen Youth Prize for composing and has had works broadcast on ABC Classic FM, the Sound Barrier, and Making Waves. His music has been commissioned and performed by groups and organisations including the Musica Viva Australia, the Affinity Quartet, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, Flinders Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra Collective as featured on the ABC Album Hush 18 “Collective Wisdom”. In 2020 he was accepted for the USF International New Music Festival in the USA and has recently finished a scholarship-funded masters degree at the University of Melbourne studying under Professor Elliot Gyger. He is also an experienced pianist and accompanist, a recipient of an LmusA with Distinction, numerous open prizes from the Hobart Eisteddfod including the Nelle Ashdown Memorial Award, a concerto soloist, and has toured with Virtuosi Tasmania. In his spare time he runs a YouTube channel called 2 Composers 1 Channel, which focuses on bringing contemporary music to the masses, as well as working as a music journalist for publications CutCommon and The Mercury.
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Jeremi Edwards (Julia Perry Award) Jeremi W. Edwards, a native of Louisiana, and is an alumnus of McNeese State University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in music education (2017). He then pursued a Master of Music in Theory and Composition at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2019). His academic journey culminated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition, from the Louisiana State University, His Dissertation titled: “A Synthesis of Contemporary Music Composition Pedagogy Practices for the Undergraduate and Graduate Level Sequences, and An Exploration of Time, Sound, and Space: An Aleatoric Event Score in Collaboration with the LSU Museum of Art” (2022). While at LSU Jeremi W. Edwards premiered a total of 4 hours of new music which included a New chamber piece “Beneath the Veil” at Carnegie Hall in New York City in April of 2022. Jeremi W. Edwards has Attended several Summer Music Festivals which includes, The Mostly Modern Music Festival 2019, 2022, The Collaborative Piano Institute 2020, The New Music on the Bayou Festival 2023, and he has currently been accepted into the 2024 Alba International Music Festival Composition program, The 2024 New Music on the Bayou Festival, and the 2024 Texas New Music Festival. Currently, Dr. Jeremi W. Edwards serves as the Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at McNeese State University within the W.A. and Dorothy Hanna Department of Performing Arts at McNeese State University. Jeremi W. Edwards’s compositional oeuvre represents a synthesis of his appreciation for neo-classical textures and the intricate nuances of 20th and 21st century harmonic structures. Jeremi W. Edwards is currently working on several large-scale collaborative projects. He actively seeks commission projects for student, community, and professional ensembles, demonstrating his passion for fostering musical innovation and artistic expression within his community and beyond.
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Paulino de Jesus ContrerasPaulino de Jesus Contreras is a professional musician, music director, music educator, and composer based in south-central Pennsylvania. Paulino was born in Mexico but was raised in southern California and Pennsylvania. As a music educator he specializes in bilingual education and has taught music in a Spanish immersion school for 8 years. As a performer and director Paulino focuses on classical music and musical theatre and has directed and played in many professional pit orchestras. He has also been invited as a soloist with several orchestras in Pennsylvania and serves as the artist-in-residence for Berks Sinfonietta where he will perform the five Beethoven concerti over a period of several years. The first two have already been performed. As a composer Paulino writes music in a hybrid style that takes the forms and harmonic language of classical traditions and combines it with the rhythms and style of latino dance music. Paulino has recently made his California debut with a premiere of his piece for Baritone voice and Piano “Oración: Sálvame” which was commissioned by the Grammy nominated choir Pacific Edge Voices.
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D. Alexander PorterD. Alexander Porter (b.1998) is a composer/performer currently based in Salt Lake City, Utah. His work, which frequently features electronics and field recordings, is often inspired by places, and people's relationship to those places. His works have been performed by Hypercube and SPLICE Ensemble. Alex is currently seeking a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition from the University of Utah, where he is currently studying with Dr. Miguel Chuaqui.
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Alistair WenAlistair Wen has been playing piano and composing since he was five. He is currently a student at The Nueva School in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alistair is currently studying composition, classical saxophone, and piano in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music pre-collegiate program, and plays alto with the Stanford Jazz Workshop Big Band. From 2022-23 Alistair studied music in Vienna, Austria, where he gave multiple performances, including at the Palais Kempinski and Vivaldi Saal. Outside of music, he enjoys computer programming, board games and playing with his dog
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Yi-De ChenOriginating from Taiwan, Yi-De Chen is a composer and educator whose musical language embodies diversity, spirituality, and poetic sensibility. A grant recipient from the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and National Culture and Arts Foundation, Chen’s works have been performed in music festivals, including the Valéncia International Performance Academy and Festival in Spain, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the SEAMUS National Conference, the Donald Tavel Arts and Technology Research Center─Earth Day Art Model Festival, the Charlotte New Music Festival, the Julius Quartet─Workshop & Concert, the Asian Composers League Festival in Japan, and the Taipei International New Music Festival.He has received commissions from the Beo String Quartet, the Indiana University JSoM Concert Band, Ensemble KNM Berlin, Malaysia Dá Capo Voice Choir, Hong Kong Dufy Atelier des Musicians & Artists, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the TimeArt Studio, the Elite Artists Trio, and Nan-Yi Musical Theater.
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Nathaniel AkersNathaniel Akers is an American composer living and working in Minnesota. A graduate of Indiana University East (B. Mus Arts) and the University of Minnesota (M. Mus), he has had works performed in the United States, Canada, and Italy. Among recent performances is a large-scale chamber work, Flight of Chance, premiered in Boston by the Essex Chamber Music Players. He attended the 2010 and 2012 editions of the Alba Music Festivals and had the premiere of his wind quintet Ça Ira by the University of Maryland Graduate Wind Quintet in 2012. His primary teachers in composition include Elliott Miles McKinley and Alex Lubet, and he has worked privately in composition with William Thomas McKinley, Peter Russell Farmer, and Erich Stem. Although he doesn’t work in the music industry or in higher education, music remains at the core of his identity.
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Luke HaefnerLuke Haefner (b. 2002) comes from a rich folk tradition where music is an essential part of everyday life. For years, Luke dabbled in various instruments (often unsuccessfully) and styles before finally settling on the piano, which he taught himself at his family’s out-of-tune upright. That curiosity, which brought him to his life as a musician and piano teacher, informs his compositions, in which he loves to explore the possibilities of timbre and texture in developing cohesive musical narratives. Luke studies composition with Zach Zubow at Queens University of Charlotte and is very excited to join the Alba Music Festival Composition Program as a fellow.
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Kevin Germain Kevin Germain composes and performs in Turkish classical idioms, as well as composing for Western classical genres. Compositions include multiple works for chorus, solo guitar, guitar and voice, string quartet, and pieces for Turkish oud and ensemble. He has worked as a performer and improviser in numerous big bands, world music, and improvisational ensembles, such as the Springfield Accordion Orchestra, Euphony Groove, Group Semai, Happy Valley Guitar Orchestra, Cambridge Muziki Cemeyeti, and others. He performed at the Jahan-e-Khusrau Sufi music festival at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2006 and led Sufi chanting with instruments and without for many years. His composition, Pastoral For String Quartet, No.II: Mt Tom, Yellow Autumnal Light of Ash and Birch, was premiered by the Julius Quartet in the winter of 2022. Other highlights are his guitar and voice arrangement of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, published by Edizone Berben in 1996 as well as his collaboration as oud performer on Peter Blanchette’s Fantasy for Oud and Guitar Orchestra (2010) based on Huseyni Saz Samaisi of Kemani Tatyos. Kevin studied jazz guitar with Bob Ferrier, Turkish makam with Feridun Ozgoren and Frederick Stubbs, and traditional Western classical music composition with William Maloof and Thomas McGah at Berklee College of Music. Worked with the late editor of Edizione Berben, Angelo Gilardino on engraving for guitar. In addition to composing chamber music, Kevin currently sings with the Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus and studies composition with Victoria Symphony's Composer-Mentor-in-Residence, Rodney Sharman. I enjoyed and I continue to revel in all kinds of sounds; loud cacophony thrills me as much as the softest delicate harmonies. I don’t regret the resulting tinnitus, Motorhead, Mahler, John Cage, Ornette Coleman; it was all worth it and I would do it again. When I am not composing, I am with my wife Dianne working at our bookshop, Splendor Solis Books.
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Aidan Feeney A native of Northwest Indiana, USA, Aidan Feeney seeks to write music that rediscovers the connections between audiences and musicians, between Romanticism and Realism. His works have been performed in venues such as Addicott and Joshi Recital Hall at Indiana University South Bend, Ruth Lilly Recital Hall at the University of Indianapolis, and the National Gallery of Art Auditorium in Washington, DC. Feeney has previously studied with Jorge Muñiz, DMA at Indiana University South Bend, and currently studies composition at the undergraduate level with Joel Philip Friedman, DMA and Stephen Gorbos, DMA at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC
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Cameron SmithCameron Smith is a composer, orchestrator and pianist from Salt Lake City, Utah. In her youth, Cameron studied classical piano performance with local university professor Dr. Irene Peery-Fox. She transitioned to music composition during her undergrad, obtaining dual degrees- music composition and film scoring- and a minor in conducting from Berklee College of Music. While at Berklee, Cameron performed as the pianist for music composition chair Richard Carrick’s composer’s sinfonietta. In her final year she was awarded the Vuk Kulenovic Memorial prize for her collection of piano works entitled Scenes from My Childhood. Projects post graduation include orchestration work for Green Planet (BBC Documentary), Upgraded (Amazon Prime Original), and The Crown (Netflix Series, Season 5), as well as other TV series, films, and musicals. Cameron’s arrangements for artist Portugal The Man and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra were recently performed at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. As a pianist, Cameron has performed professionally in pit orchestras for ballets, musicals, and more. Her piano arrangements for The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse were included in Charlie Macksey’s educational collection, partnered with the National Literacy Trust, Penguin Random House UK and the BBC. Cameron has recently returned from premiering a new piece written and performed in Denali National Park and Preserve entitled Natural Exception which aims to spread awareness for climate change.
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