The 2026 Program Fellows
2026 David Stock Award
Aidan Cadigan
Aidan Cadigan is a composer and trumpet player currently studying composition at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, where they study under Dr. Jiyoun Chung. Aidan explores the boundaries of genre and convention, seeking to incorporate various styles in their musical lexicon. Aidan has premiered a piece for solo trumpet and piano, (un)stuck (2025), and a setting of Tennison S. Black's Unruly for solo voice and piano (2026). They are an alum of the 2025 Walden Creative Musicians Retreat in Dublin, New Hampshire, and are honored to be attending Alba Music Festival as part of the 2026 Composition Program.
2026 Julia Perry Award
Juan Luis de Pablo Enriquez Rohen2
Mexican composer, researcher, and educator, Juan Luis was born in Mexico City in 1971. With over four decades dedicated to music creation and interdisciplinary exploration, he is best known as the founder and developer of the pioneering JLPER Theory, a groundbreaking framework that unifies music, astronomy, and archaeology. Through more than 25 years of rigorous independent research, his theory has enabled him to reinterpret pre-Columbian artifacts—most notably decoding the Aztec Sun Stone not as a mere calendar, but as a sophisticated mathematical map of the solar system and astronomical almanac. His work has produced hundreds of writings and compositions inspired by these cosmic and ancient connections, shedding new light on Mesoamerican knowledge of celestial mechanics far predating European discoveries. His compositional output spans solo and chamber music, choral pieces, and orchestral dances, often drawing from Mexican heritage, sacred themes, and astronomical phenomena. Notable works include “Kepha: Episodes on the Life of Saint Peter” (commissioned and performed by Agarita), Tepeilhuitl (a piano fantasia evoking lunar and ritual imagery), and Xoctlamique Nuxochiltzin (commissioned and released by the San Antonio Chamber Choir). His music has been presented through platforms like the Composers Alliance of San Antonio (CASA), independent releases, and a PHD by Annika Mikołajko-Osman, reflecting a blend of contemporary techniques with profound cultural and scientific inquiry. As an educator, he has taught composition, harmony, counterpoint, analysis, orchestration, and related subjects at institutions including the University of Houston, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Universidad La Salle, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Centro Morelense de las Artes, and Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán. His mentors include distinguished composers Timothy Kramer, Víctor Rasgado, Michael Horvit, and Reynaldo Ochoa and Robert Nelson. He was among the select Mexican composers invited to audition for a doctoral degree in composition by the Juilliard School faculty and admissions committee.
2026 Leslie Bassett Award
Demir Özen
Demir Özen (b.2005) is a Turkish composer whose work explores the integration of contemporary music practices with elements of Turkish cultural heritage. He completed his primary and secondary education at Çakır Schools, where he began his musical training at an early age, studying saxophone and piano. During his studies at Zeki Muren Fine Arts High School, Ozen discovered a strong interest in composition and pursued focused studies in this field under the guidance of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Armagan Durdag. This period played a significant role in shaping his compositional approach and artistic direction. Özen is currently pursuing a degree in Composition at San Diego State University, where he continues his compositional studies with Prof. Dr. Texu Kim. His works often combine contemporary compositional techniques with idioms, modes, and rhythmic characteristics drawn from Turkish musical traditions, reflecting an ongoing interest in cultural dialogue and musical synthesis.
Halimah Muhammad
Halimah Muhammad is a composer and French horn player from Pensacola, Florida. Muhammad began composing along with playing the French horn during her high school years. Her passion for composing arose from playing various music literature that impressed her as she participated in band ensembles at school. As a result of observing works that caught her eye, Muhammad sought to create her own remarkable compositions instead of always performing and listening to the works of other composers. She received her bachelor's degree in Music Composition from Stetson University in DeLand Florida in May of 2021. At Stetson University, Muhammad studied composition with Dr. Manuel de Murga. Muhammad recently received her Master of Music degree in May of 2023 from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale,Illinois where she studied composition with Dr. Christopher Walczak. Halimah Muhammad explores writing compositions for a variety of wind and string instruments that each contain unique moods. Her first composition for a large ensemble , An Air Travel Journey for wind ensemble, was recently completed in the spring of 2023.
Kieran Bakunas
Kieran Bakunas is an Ohio-based composer and french horn player who explores themes of nature, social justice, and representation. With a focus on environmental activism, he has delivered award winning presentations at multiple interdisciplinary conferences on how nature conservation can become more accessible through its connection to music. Through the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, he works one-on-one with faculty members in fields of music theory, composition, and music history; as an ambassador for the School of Music, he assists in the operation of electroacoustic festivals such as CLICK FEST as well as admissions events for the college. Kieran has also worked with professional ensembles such as Unheard-of//Ensemble, and is looking forward to an upcoming premiere with the Hinge Quartet. He also remains an active musician, performing in Ohio University’s Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, and has performed on stage with well-known groups such as the Boston Brass, R.E.M. and the Indigo Girls. He is currently pursuing a Bachelors of Arts in Music with concentrations in music composition and french horn performance at Ohio University.
Alumni Award (‘25)
Stephen A. White
Stephen White has been composing music, intermittently and non-professionally, for more than 30 years – starting in college. He originally studied music theory and compositional techniques on his own. He is currently enrolled as a student at Concordia University, Irvine, California, USA, to take music composition classes for a better foundation and an understanding of how to write better music. During this time, he has composed a string quartet, a set of nocturnes for piano and tenor sax, a suite for unaccompanied cello, four piano solos, a piano trio, and four orchestra pieces, and three choral pieces.
University of Miami Fellow
Samuel Rose
Samuel Rose is a composer and pianist whose music usually draws from scenes of nature and nostalgia. He has won awards for his compositions, including the Ruth Crawford Seeger Prize and the Golden Key Music Festival’s Piano Composition Competition, in which he was invited to Vienna to perform his winning work. He was also chosen for the NowBeat 2024 Cycle in collaboration with the Juilliard School of Music, in which Juilliard students premiered his work for two cellos written for the occasion. In late 2024, his piano work, “Leaves of Maple,” was selected for a call for scores for the Osmose Festival in Belgium, winning alongside Grammy winners and other distinguished composers, being the youngest composer selected. In the Spring of 2026, he will be performing his piano prelude, “In a Trance,” at the Society of Composers Inc. Region IV Conference in Boone, North Carolina. He is currently earning his Bachelor of Music in Music Composition at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, where he studies with Dr. Donald Scott Stinson and Dr. Lansing McLoskey.
Michael Berkowitz
Michael Berkowitz is a composer, guitarist, and software engineer. Based outside of Boston, he has studied at Oberlin Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory and Longy’s Divergent Studio. As a guitarist, he has performed with community and semi-professional theater companies throughout the Boston area. As a composer, Michael draws inspiration from the forms and themes of literature and poetry, often using his programming background to plan and develop large- and small-scale elements of his work. His music has been performed by the Boston Conservatory String Orchestra, the Divergent Trio, Marti Epstein, and Departure Duo.
Samuel de Lima
Samuel de Lima (he/they) is a Brazilian American undergraduate composition student at New York University studying with Dr. Jerica Oblak. Sam likes to explore the mind texturally through accessible approaches to composing. A pianist, guitarist, and cellist, he got his start at an early age performing as many genres as he could. Today Sam writes and produces a wide selection of music including classical concert music and genre-bending songs, alongside film, game, dance, and theatrical scores. He is currently composing music for ad campaigns for the LOOKSUNS 宝鸡老实人 company on a continuous basis. His theatrical compositions have been featured in the NYU Collective Play Festival, and film scores recognized in the Gothamite Monthly Film awards, Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival, Post Alley Film Festival, and Bridge Film Festival. Other collaborations include Quartteto Noûs at the Veneto Art and Music Summit, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Luna Composition Lab, Unheard-Of Ensemble, Dither Guitar Quartet, Jonathan Haas, and Jacques Lee Wood. Sam has also co-founded Co-Lab-o-Rate, an online game where artists’ collaborations are built into mutually monetizable products, and directs Artists in Action’s multi-media Art for Change Festival among other community programming.
Stephen Fuss
Stephen Fuss (b. 1996) is an internationally known composer and educator living in Boardman, Oregon. From serving on city committees, to teaching privately and in the classroom, Stephen uses their skills and experience to help bring the performing arts to rural Oregon. They graduated in 2020 with their Bachelors of Music: Composition and Bachelors of Music Education at the University of Kansas where they studied with Ingrid Stölzel. Stephen has attended several festivals including the Sao Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival, The Texas New Music Festival, and has plans to attend the Mexico City Sessions of TMNF, and the Alba New Music Festival this year. They have also recently premiered a trio of violin miniatures, helped to start and run a non-profit theater company, and coached several of their students to contest wins and splendid performances. The music that Stephen writes explores the relationship between music, nature, and the human experience. Using Minimalist and Renaissance techniques, Stephen weaves and sculpts the music into evocative stories that leave the listener satisfied. Using nature as inspiration, Stephen's latest works explore the liminal spaces that one finds themselves in when they are out in the world alone. They are currently working on their second group of works entitled "Elemental Musings.”
Kyujung Lim
Kyujung is a New York based composer who explores the multidimensional nature of time and timbre in her music. She is drawn to the expansiveness and sense of clarity that are present around us but often hidden in the reality we live in. Belonging and forming meaningful connections have been the recurring themes in Kyujung's art. Since her young age, Kyujung has noticed that the presence of sound with different colors, shapes, and dimensions would heighten her sensitivity of perceiving the world. Such aural experiences would have the power of bringing out the boundaries of beings to the field of vitality, by providing a pathway to create emotional and sensual connections to our surroundings. Such keen interest in aural colors and textures led Kyujung to explore a variety of academic principles and aesthetics in her artistic pursuits. Her music is primarily based on but not limited to the lineage of contemporary classical music, where she also blends the components of Jazz and early Korean musical traditions along with the mathematical and software representation of audio signals into her music making. Kyujung has worked with the well-known professional ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, Arx Duo, Mivos Quartet, Slee Sinfonietta, Tacet(i) Ensemble, PHACE Ensemble, and Trio Immersio to have her compositions performed, and her music has been played in various venues/events such as the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New Music Gathering, Spencer Museum of Art, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Berklee Performance Center, Red Room at Cafe 939, and other concert halls at Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, an Boston Conservatory. Kyujung holds a Master's degree in composition from Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Artist's Diploma in Jazz composition & performance from Berklee College of Music where she studied with Marti Epstein, Timothy McCormack, Eunyoung Lee, Tamar Diesendruck, and Jonathan Holland. Kyujung is also a composer participant for ICEBERG Institute '23, Yarn/Wire Institute '22, and Ears to Earth project at University of Kansas. In addition, she holds Bachelor's (KAIST) and Master's degrees (Cornell University) in Electrical and Computer engineering and currently works as a software engineer at Google.
Roger Williams University Fellow
Georgia Olson
Georgia Olson is a student of music composition at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. She has had works performed by the Semiosis string quartet and Kalliope reed quintet, and her principal instructor is composer Elliott Miles McKinley. She hails from Seattle, Washington, whose rich history, culture, and proximity to nature are among her greatest influences. Alongside her compositions, she also studies creative writing and is the music director for an on-campus a cappella group.
University of Miami Fellow
Cole Davin
Cole Davin is a composer and pianist from Fairfield, Connecticut, currently studying at the University of Miami's prestigious Frost School of Music. With a major in Media Scoring, a minor in Composition, and a concentration in Classical Piano, Cole is deeply committed to merging classical foundations with contemporary scoring techniques. Through a unique blend of media music and traditional composition, Cole strives to craft emotionally resonant and innovative musical landscapes. Whether composing for film, television, or concert settings, his work is characterized by a deep understanding of both musical theory and the power of storytelling through sound.