2026 WINNER: LUCY McKNIGHT (‘17)

Lucy McKnight (she/they) is a composer, vocalist, and cellist who uses touch, intimacy, movement, and sound to build mutually cathartic musical experiences. Lucy has built homemade instrument-sculptures out of wood, pipes, pans, strings, and tinfoil, and has sewn a 150ft long patchwork fabric scarf filled with magnets to create a tactile speaker sculpture that weaves through performance spaces. Her work has been performed across the U.S and in Europe by artists and ensembles including Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Klang, JACK Quartet, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Yarn/Wire, ~Nois, Parker Ramsay, Nick Photinos, Dither Quartet, Longleash Trio, Transient Canvas, So Percussion, and Attacca Quartet. Lucy studied with Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Sean Friar, and Nina Young, and graduated from USC Thornton School of Music with a BM in Music Composition in 2020. She has participated in numerous music festivals including Bang on a Can, IRCAM Manifeste, New Music on the Point, and Norfolk New Music Workshop, and was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award in 2024. She is a founding member of Demestvo—a vocal quartet specializing in early polyphony, particularly 17th century Slavic chant—which has performed in Spain, Portugal, Armenia, Georgia, Princeton and New York. Lucy loves their cats, reading, pottery, painting, woodwork, colorful sunglasses to go with any exuberant outfit, and plunging into the ocean at sunrise and sunset, with particular affinity for the Pacific Ocean off the coast of their hometown, Los Angeles. Currently, Lucy is pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University.